With the confidence of someone who knows she has backup burritos in the freezer, I attempted a stuffed eggplant dish that didn’t look too hard. Cut open, scrape out, mix in, scoop onto, and bake. Easy peasy! 
Silly, silly girl. It wasn’t that the eggplant was a smidge unwieldy–it was actively working against me. The shape would seem to imply easy grip, but the smooth exterior was slippery. Part of the problem was that I had to use more force than I’d expected. That spongey interior seems soft and pliable, but the skin clung to it for dear life. I couldn’t even figure out what tool to use to hollow it out–knives just gouged and sliced, and spoons didn’t have enough of an edge to do any damage whatsoever. My eggplant “boat” looked more like a skiff, but I figured the filling would hide the flaws.
For you who are new, “experimental” anything means I’m improvising because I never have all the ingredients the recipe calls for. Most notably, the ground beef I thought I had in the freezer turned out to be sausage–a happy accident, in my opinion. The cheese was also a blend instead of straight Parmesan, but again, that seemed to be a fine substitution. All in all, I’d say I pulled it together admirably. 
The dish as a whole was delicious, but the signature ingredient was tough and rubbery as usual. I don’t know why I feel compelled to keep trying, but despite my recent defeat, I still feel faint stirrings of defiance. They say bad guys wear black, but Disney shows us that purple is the true color of evil. Never give up! Never surrender!
Vegetable Challenge 
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