The Proof is in the Eggplant

I cooked tonight.  No, really.  I can prove it. 

I cooked tonight.  And not even the type of cooking that requires quotation marks around the word. 

I have several cookbooks, usually excellent dust collectors, and tonight I looked up eggplant in Healthy Cooking for Two (or Just for You) ... [I didn't say this story was without pitiful parts] ... and found Roasted Eggplant Parmesan.

Sounds complicated.

Four ingredients.  SCORE!

Eggplant, olive oil, marinara sauce, and mozzarella.

I have three of those four things! Sweet! This is destiny given my typically barren food supply.  Let's just say, I am not the domestic goddess who keeps "things" on hand in order to "whip" up anything.  I am the reason cookbooks with "four ingredients" in the title exist.  This can happen.  No, this will happen. 

So, I just need the eggplant. I can do that. I can totally do that.  Meijer must have them. Meijer has everything. 

A few minutes later, I'm standing in front of purple weeble-wobbles with wee green hats, pressing, squeezing, generally completely ignorant of how to pick one of these things out.  I guess.

I grab some Parmesan just for fun.

Back home, I cut the eggplant into eight pieces, bake 'em for 20 minutes, then layer them in a pan with the sauce and two kinds of cheese (the oil was for the pan) and pop them back in for another 20 minutes.

Bam! I'm eating something remotely healthy and purple.

That I cooked! I used a knife and the oven!!!

I know!

An Arctic breeze must have blown through Hell tonight.