the joys of roasted eggplant

Try making a roasted eggplant sandwich one of these days. If you haven't had eggplant in a while, you'll probably wonder what else you could have been eating for so long!

After you roast that eggplant-- here, I cut it into rounds, but you could just as easily slice the vegetable lengthwise to get a more sandwich-conducive oval-- using olive oil, black pepper, and some herbs, take that crusty old half-loaf of bread that's been sitting in the bread basket and toast it with just a touch of olive oil and some complementary herbs like thyme, rosemary, or dill. Then put the two together and there you have something savory and nutritious. 

I put cumin and paprika on these rounds, tarragon and thyme on some others. 

I suppose, if you wanted to dress it down for Lent, you could just roast the thing in the olive oil and slap it on some dry toast. But while you're at it, you might just slice it up and put it on a piece of bread raw... although I'm not sure if that would be safe. 

Raw onions are safe. You could stack some of those on some bread and call it a Friday! ;)