Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

I have actually never eaten Indian food in my life. After discovering a little local Indian store here in town last week, I have become VERY interested in trying all kinds of Indian food. I have heard that the food that you get in Indian restaurants can sometimes be extremely greasy, so I would really prefer to cook the stuff at home. I didn't want to make a big pot of something I might not like, and I needed to go to the Indian store last night to grab a couple of things, so I hit the freezer section and after MUCH searching (seems like everything had milk or cream in it) I finally found something called Baingan Bharta. After getting home and finding recipes, it seems like it has yogurt or some other dairy product in it alot, but this particular brand that I got did not for some reason, so I got it. I guess you are supposed to eat this over rice or on Pita bread, but since I am really trying to cut back on the carbs right now, I decided to just eat it by itself. I heated it up and ate a little bit of it last night (what I didn't need for the lunchbox) and I really liked it. I am glad that I liked my first taste of Indian food because I was worried that I might have picked something that nobody likes and it would have tainted my whole opinion of that style of food. This Eggplant Curry, as it is also called, is very good. I will be making some using this recipe (without the yogurt of course, I will either leave it out completely or substitute with soy yogurt or sour cream) in the very near future.

The green container holds some seasoned yellow squash, onions and red bell peppers. Then I threw in a couple of different things into the small containers that could serve as lunch or snack items. I will sometimes raid the lunchbox around 9:30AM and eat some fruit or something out of there for a snack. Either one of the small containers today could serve that purpose. One has some peeled baby carrots and the other holds some unsalted cashews that I purchased in a BIG bag at the Indian store. They were much cheaper there than at the grocery store. I don't know if they have had anything done to them or not. They are not dry-roasted or cooked in anyway, and there's no salt on them. I assume they are just raw. They are a lot lighter in appearance than what you see at the grocery store, which made me think that they might be really dried up, but they are not. They are delicious, some of the best cashews I have ever eaten. They're also supposed to be good for helping to straighten out your cholesterol level, so that's why I thought they might make a good snack for the lunchbox.

Well, that does it for the week. I really relied on prepackaged food this week more than I would have liked. I am going to try and get back to cooking the majority of stuff myself next week. I'll probably have my head buried in the laptop this weekend reading recipes and reading up about cholesterol since it's supposed to rain here. Thanks for checking in this week and I'll see everybody back here on Monday. Have a GREAT weekend!