Easy recipes

I have always enjoyed cooking, but the days of really complicated dishes are long gone. Now the easier the better. Sometimes I look back into my repertoire for the good ones; sometimes I make them up (with some failures and some successes). Here are three I have made recently:

1.Baked Eggs and Cheese

This is a recipe brought to the USA from England by my dear mother-in-law Mina, who had it from her grandmother.

Preheat oven to 350

You decide how many you want to serve, from two to thirty and choose a casserole dish to suit. Smear it with a little butter.
Break each egg carefully into a small dish to make sure it is all right and keeping the yoke intact slip it into the prepared casserole.
Add as much good cheddar cheese as you would like; the cheesier the better for us.
Sprinkle with a little black pepper and some half and half. I don't measure anything. It works with no half and half, as I discovered recently when I had none.

Slip uncovered into pre-heated oven. Keep an eye on it. More baking and all the yolks will be hard. Less and some or all will be soft. We like a nice brown crust on the top.

Those who don't do egg yolks can eat just the whites and the cheese.

In our little apartment, I use a microwave. Not that I would recommend that in general, but the eggs and cheese I made the other day came out fine:

5 eggs, a good amount of cheese, and no cream microwaved for about 7 minutes. Check for doneness.

2. Apple compote

This is a microwave recipe. No sugar, no flour. Cut up as many apples as will fit nicely into a microwavable dish: I use the lovely one we got from the Willemses, which is oven proof, microwavable and dishwasher safe as well as beautiful. Sprinkle the fruit with lots of plain cinnamon powder (no sugar) and sprinkle with sugar-free vanilla. Our son Dave makes me vanilla will beans and vodka: delicious. Cover thoroughly with waxed paper, and make a slit at the top for steam. In our little microwave oven 10 minutes works well. Allow to cool and serve with 0% fat Fage yogurt if you wish. You can use other fruit as well: I have added grapes, pears, whatever is on hand, as long as the main fruit is apple.


3. Here's one I made up recently. Eggplant and tomato stew

Eggplant: choose a light weight one so the seeds won't be fully developed (seeds are bitter).
Chop as much onion as you want and saute on low flame in olive oil until very soft in a large frying pan. I put the burner on low and let the onions almost melt (not brown). It takes a long time. Perhaps 45 minutes. Garlic is fine too, at the same time, as much as you like. When the onions and garlic are soft, chop up the eggplant, skin and all. The pieces should be quite small. Place on top of the onions. Cover. After that cooks down a while, add sliced fresh tomatoes, as many as you want. A dash of oregano is good too. And pepper if you like. Cook on low, covered, until the tomatoes and eggplant are quite well done. You can mix all together at this point--or not. And serve with grated cheese. Goes well on top of noodles or rice too.

Ok, that's all the recipes I have at the top of my mind. A recent effort to make baked eggplant parmigiana was OK, but not worth making again.

And so it goes.

Love to all,
Bernice