A Girls Night In

Last night my mother and I had an absolutely delightful, albeit rare, girls night in. After mom sent her men to the race track and I shooed my big man off to work and tucked the little man in to his swing, we then began cooking. Mom made this to die for pasta ala The Pioneer Woman.

(picture taken from PW website)

YOU.MUST.MAKE.THIS.

While she whipped up this noodley delight I was in charge of making the eggplant parmesan. For the longest time I have wanted to try eggplant but I have always had an unexplainable fear to do so, especially since my husband assured me that I was not missing out on anything. When I first sliced into it the smell of cucumber (yuck) wafted up to my nose. I was afraid. The spongy texture was off-putting to put it mildly.  Raw eggplant tastes like cucumbers made sweet produce love to banana resulting in this oddly matched offspring...I kind of liked it. Luckily it turns out that eggplant parmesan is a very tasty dish. While freshly out of the oven it had an unexplainable seafood taste, maybe calamari-esque . Day old eggplant tastes nothing like fresh, it has almost a mushroom meets zucchini meets fried-green-tomatoes-texture taste but it is also very good.
We finished the night watching Julie and Julia, a movie I highly recommend.
All in all it was a fabulous night until around 9 pm when my barely-napped baby decides that he is overly tired and we are stuck at my mothers with no way home. That is when I turned "bitchy" (to quote my mother...I love you too mom :-P ).