A day in the kitchen; eggplant Parmesan and dark chocolate cookies

What to do with eggplant? Make eggplant Parmesan of course!

It was Jeff's last day of holidays and so it was great to make this altogether. First we sliced the eggplant and layed the pieces out on a cooling rack so the eggplant could drain.

Eggplant has so much excess water so we sprinkled salt on the pieces and that brings the water out.

We left this for an hour.

Snuggle time with tangled and tea; what a perfect thing to do on a Tuesday afternoon.

This is after an hour; can you see the water? I was quite surprised by the amount.

We then dried the pieces on paper towel before starting the breading process.

We dredged the eggplant in seasoned flour, egg and milk mixture and then panko seasoned with Parmesan cheese, parsley, salt and pepper.

Then we needed to brown the coated eggplant; I did not realize how much oil this process takes. We basically shallow fried the coated eggplant in a hot pan in batches; many batches!

Once both sides were brown we let them drain on paper towel.

Now for the actual eggplant Parmesan assembly; I layered marinara sauce, the coated eggplant, basil and  mozzarella.

We baked this for 45-50 on 350F. It got bubbly and brown; we served this with cooked pasta and a side salad. It was a lot of work but it was very tasty. We used 4 eggplants and We made three good size cassorole dishes of eggplant Parmesan.

So by the time dinner was finished we were both pretty done with the day but one of us mentioned cookies and then before I knew it I had my mixer on high speed!

My sister in law sent me this recipe.

I doubled it; they make very large cookies.

Aubrey ate her bed time snack on the counter while I whipped this together.

I baked these for 11-14 minutes on 350F and let them cool on the stove top.

These are ridiculously good!  A brownie/cookie! Aubrey asked for a cookie as her bedtime snack...um no way! I said there would be one with her name on it for tomorrow after breakfast; that seems fair!

So now I sit; cookie in hand, both kids asleep and no more dishes to wash; thank you and good night!