Waste Not Want Not (Using up Produce)

It never fails that I end up with something lingering in the veg bin of the refrigerator.   While I was making out my menus, I did a quick glance to see what was there, and a huge eggplant was staring back at me.  I’ve been craving tomatoes — vitamin C I am guessing.  So I decided to make eggplant lasagna with the self imposed restriction of only being able to use what I had on hand.

A quick pull through and I found I had more than enough ingredients to pull together a decent vegetarian lasagna.  I used:

Garlic (Sam’s Club)

Kalmata Olives (Aldi)

Parmesan (Lidl/Aldi)

Mushrooms (Dollar Tree)

Tomato Powder (food storage)

Canned tomatoes (Walmart purchased on sale and with coupon)

Dried onion (food storage)

Dried bell pepper (food storage)

Ricotta (Lidl?)

Egg (Aldi)

Italian seasoning (Sam’s Club)

Eggplant (Aldi)

I sliced my eggplant and salted it to draw out some moisture and bitterness.

I mixed the ricotta, the powdered parm, and an egg together and set aside.

I put the sauce ingredients (except for tomato powder) in the pressure cooker along with a can of water.

30 minutes (soup function)

Then stirred in tomato powder to thicken it.

Rinsed and drained the eggplant and assembled two lasagnas.

This one I topped with cheese immediately and put in the pressure cooker for 30 minutes.

The one in the glass baking dish is not topped with cheese. 

I’ll top it with cheese when I get ready to cook it, but for now it is going in the freezer.

This was really good!