I live! .....no thanks to my cooking abilities

So after casually mentioning this blog at work and, to my horror, finding out people actually wanted to see it, I've decided to update.  Grad school is now officially over, so in theory, I have time to learn to cook again. This weekend was also "the boy" (as my one friend calls him) and my 6 month anniversary, so I decided to engage in a home cooked meal.

The boy is a big fan of eggplant parm, so I decided to give it a go.  Googled a few recipes, got the general consensus, and went to it.

"Sweating" the eggplant was easy. (Salt it, let the moisture draw out, dab away moisture) although I think I used a tree's worth of paper towels.  This was also the point where I realized I'd bought one eggplant too many (the recipes all said two were required!) I can only assume Albany has mutant eggplants.

So I lightly floured them, dipped in egg, and did the breadcrumbs. This worked fine for the first half, but by the end the breadcrumbs were getting clumpy and not cooperating.

Put some oil in the skillet and set to frying them up. I figured the first few would burn a little til I got the temperature just right......

                                                                   NAILED IT!

The rest weren't too bad, but the crumbs kept falling off and burning. Before long my apartment was full of smoke. I had to cover all the fire alarms. As this is going down, I'm also trying to heat up some bread and make a fresh salad as the boy was set to arrive at any minute. Eventually, managed to get things under control. Added fresh basil and poured the sauce into the pan

Popped everything in. Added fresh mozzerella on top (mmmm).....It took way longer to bake than the recipes said, but overall, it turned out okay. Apparently the boy likes charred eggplant, so that worked out well.

I also made chocolate chip cookies! Halfway through I realized I didn't have a mixer, so I did it all by hand. All things considered, they came out okay. A little grainy, but for not having a mixer what can you do. I did try my roommate's old hand mixer from the 1960's, but the batter got so thick it nearly pulled the hand mixer down into the cookie-quicksand, so I abandoned that.

However, the recipe explicitly states it should have made 60 cookies....I got 22.......so the moral of the story is, either I'm a cookie monster, or recipes cannot be trusted EVER.

WORTH THE EFFORT?:

The Eggplant Parm: The boy liked it, so I'm going to say yes, but I don't think I'd ever bother with it just for me. Especially with a kitchen that looked like this afterwards: