Eggplant Stuffed With Rice and Tomatoes

This recipe for Eggplant Stuffed With Rice and Tomatoes appeared in the NY Times Recipes for Health with a collection of stuffed vegetable recipes for late summer vegetables - zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and bell peppers.  It's been on my radar for a few weeks, and I decided to give it a try.  As I often mention, I cook for two, not twenty as I sometimes would like to believe, so when I started to take out the ingredients for this recipe, I opted to make roughly half of it.  Even so, not all of it was eaten :( but what was eaten was very good.  I tried the dish both cold (as suggested) and hot and it worked both ways.  The thick, vibrant sauce, made from grated tomatoes and interesting spices, made it even better.  I ended up cooking the dish for far longer than intended - I opted for brown basmati rice, so it needed a bit more time to cook.  (My mom tried the related recipe for stuffed tomatoes, and the rice didn't cook at all.  So I was cautious when starting, but this recipe called specifically for uncooked rice.)  I omitted the mint because I didn't have any, and the cilantro was really enough herb for me, especially with the strong flavor of the sauce.  This was a tasty "farewell to summer" recipe, which I ate with a friend at a picnic table in a sunny park on my lunch break.  I'll be keeping this in mind as an eggplant recipe for next summer.

Carrot Muffins

As we are all well aware I love baking and I love baking whole grain muffins specifically.  These Carrot Muffins from Good to the Grain used spelt flour, which I haven't used until now.

I don't have too much to say about these, as I only ate one and the rest went in the freezer or were shared.

My carrots were too dry - the muffin was good, but a little on the dry side - my carrots must be pretty old.  I usually use a trick from Mark Bittman - cut them into carrot sticks, then fill the container with water.  This works pretty well, but when these were cut up, they went into two huge containers and I only remembered the next day to put water in, and only in one container.  Also, it was a pain to grate carrot sticks on a box grater.  Next time I will just go get more and use whole carrots - or the food processor!  What a fabulous invention.

The streusel topping on this was delicious - and although it's a LOT of extra calories I think it added a sweetness that the muffin itself was lacking.  I'd like to play around a little and find a way to add a little more sweetness to the muffin without using the streusel topping.

While I'm writing this I couldn't help but think of the Carrot Oatmeal Cookies I made for this past year's cookie exchange.  I would love to try the carrot/ginger/coconut flavor profile in a muffin form - this could be a great starting point for that recipe.  Maybe I can do a combination of this with the Ginger Peach Muffins to move toward that flavor profile.

Mini Carrot Cake Bites

Edited: 10/28/2009. Photo added! :)


This is another one of my Pampered Chef recipes from the Season's Best Fall/Winter 2009. This is one I plan to make for at least one of my upcoming shows. I made these for my birthday the other day to bring in to work, and they were a huge hit - it has been requested that I make them again. (Not requested that I share the recipe... just that I actually make more of them myself and bring them for everyone to eat!)

An important caution: regular cake mix is 18 oz. This recipe calls for 9 oz. That means if you use an entire 18oz box (...mom) your cakes will come out dry and tasting like yellow cake instead of carrot cake. Also, adding extra carrots might sound fun, but it is hard enough to mix so I would stick close to the required amount.

This is another recipe that I would just love to make-over to be more healthy but it's not too easy. Although the Cool Whip in the filling makes me cringe, the recipe has no butter, unlike literally EVERY other cream cheese frosting recipe I found online. Plus, it has carrots in it. So it could be worse!