What
could be more savory than our warm turkey eggplant casserole on a wintry evening?
This family pleaser is only 7 points per serving. Abigail Parsons, of Bewelle, Illinois says:” I make a
double portion every Sunday, and freeze servings for meals during the week.”
Ingredients:
(makes eight ¾ cup servings)
1 16-oz can of diced
tomatoes
½ onion, finely diced
1 garlic clove,
crushed
¾ cup bread crumbs
1 tsp basil
1 cup grated lo-fat
mozzarella
¾ cup bread crumbs
1 medium sized eggplant
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1 cup mushrooms
Directions:
1 Sauté the crushed garlic and diced
onions in a heavy skillet (in 2 TBSP of olive oil). Be sure to use a low heat
and coax rather than bully the onions to turn translucent. That is the secret of
using onions to flavor rather than dominate a dish.
2 While the onions are slowly cooking,
go ahead and dice eggplant, peppers, and mushrooms. Cut in small pieces or they
will not soften enough so you will taste that acidy pepper taste and have
trouble digesting the skins and you will have to use some of your husband’s
Prilosec after dinner though you’re supposed to take it before you eat but you
never know whether a dish is going to cause indigestion or not, depending.
3 Add the ground turkey (I forgot it in
the list of ingredients but so what? I can’t do everything around here. I do
enough as it is. Anybody should guess from the title you need turkey anyway.
I’m so sick of people asking me to think for them.)
4 Add basil, canned tomatoes, diced
vegetables, bread crumbs and simmer, stirring often. Be careful not to spill
any pieces over the edge of the skillet. For this recipe I use a large sized
cast iron frying pan but who knows what size peppers they grow in Illinois, b/c they’re
getting larger every year, probably genetically altered. Like every fucking
other thing in the store and we wonder why so many people get cancer.
5 If the ingredients are too dry, add a
little chicken broth. Whoever recommended that amount of bread crumbs I don’t
know if they were kidding. The vegg are going to get onto the stove top,
spilling over top of the skillet. If you have just cleaned the mouse turds off
the stove top, make sure that you are the one cleaning the kitchen after dinner
b/c if your husband does it he will not see the bitty pieces and you’re going
to have little black droppings in the morning for sure and that’s a nasty
sight, esp when a stove is white like ours.
6 Put aluminum foil over the whole
thing and place in center of oven, bake for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees. I
forgot to write down 350 too but anybody who cooks knows this is standard temperature for a casserole.
Abigail Parsons would know, Abigail and her neat preplanning and portions, one
of those kinds of people who’s organized every minute thing in her life. Sounds
like she’s a career person. If it’s so hard to cook at night after being on her
feet all day, why the heck doesn’t her husband pitch and do it once in a while?
Too busy vegging out in front of the TV while Abigail heats up one of her
frozen casseroles. Or maybe she’s all alone, and lonely, watching the news,
eating her casserole portion on a little TV tray. Both scenarios pathetic.
7 After allotted cooking time, take the
foil off the pan, and sprinkle the mozzarella over top of the casserole. Dump
on the whole package, who cares about points, if it doesn’t get thick and
stringy, it’s just not good. Put the skillet back in the oven and bake another
fifteen minutes. If the timer on the oven cannot be heard in the den above the sound
of the TV, use the clock timer with the broken face from when you dropped it
two Christmases ago, you can carry it into the den. It is good and loud. Forget
saving the foil to use again, unless you want to spend the time scraping off
veggie matter so as not to tear the foil, a task requiring a lot of
concentration and patience. And who can recycle everything anyway. The kids
used disposable Pampers back in the 70s. I’m already going to consumer hell,
and I know it.
8 Once the melted cheese is browned,
remove casserole from oven. Let cool for five or ten minutes before eating.
Serve with crispy buttery garlic bread.
Try to make this dish last for more than one meal, but nobody’s perfect. Depending on how cold it is outside or how
many days you have been snow bound, this dish is greatly accented by a dessert
of hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream, covered with a touch of chocolate
sauce and a handful of peanuts.
Note: Don’t forget to turn off the oven. Who can
afford to waste Propane?
(copyright Cathy Larson Sky 2/24/2015)
