It's now fall and the final produce is being harvested from the garden. Eggplant Involtini is a wonderful dish for those who are not crazy about this vegetable. Serve it with a nice Malbec.
Italian Eggplant Involtini
2 eggplants (1 pound each)
olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 cups of marinara sauce
1/2 pound of thin spaghetti
20 fresh basil leaves, chopped
8 ounces ricotta cheese
1/2 pound of smoked mozzarella cheese
Slice the eggplants lengthwise into 3/8-inch thick slices. You should get 8 slices from each eggplant. Brush some olive oil on the eggplant slices and place under the broiler for 4-5 minutes per side.
Bring the water for the pasta to a boil, add salt to taste, and cook the pasta until al dente. When the pasta is ready, drain, and toss with half of the tomato sauce and half of chopped basil, stirring until the pasta is well coated. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
Coat the bottom of a baking dish with a thin layer of tomato sauce. Put a slice of the cooked eggplant on a plate. Place a few strands of spaghetti on top of the eggplant slice; the strands should drape over the slice on both sides.Add some ricotta cheese over the pasta and roll the eggplant slice around the pasta and cheese. Place the roll in the baking dish.
Serves 8
And Now For Some Advice
More Information about Mellow Out--Lessons Learned From Household Cats can be found by clicking here
From Chapter 13
Be strong in life. Just know some people will mistake your
kindness as weakness because you care for them. They will take advantage of you
and want to use you. Don't worry too much about them, because those people are
never pleased or grateful.--De philosopher Dj Kyos
Don’t Let The Fleas Gain Control
Life is full of minor irritations. If you call the telephone
company or an investment company with a very general, simple question, you get
an answering system that requires you to provide your name, address and the
last four digits of your social security number, and then you are put on hold
until someone answers the call. The telephone solicitors are always calling asking
for money, religious people knock at your door selling God, then there are the
men “working their way through college” by selling items and finally the Girl
Scouts come calling.
Before I go on, I must make a full disclosure. I actually
wait in anticipation for the Girl Scouts to come. I dream about Samoas—a crisp
cookie coated in caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and striped with dark
chocolate. Sorry for the digression. Taken individually, all of these
situations are quite minor, but collectively they are very harmful, much like
the bites of fleas on the cats.
The weather is getting warm, and the cats are starting to
scratch. It is painful to watch the fleas attack. In the past, Samantha has had
marks around her lips from the fleabites. The Mitzer just jumps around as she
attacks the fleas. For some reason, the fleas don’t like Chubby, so she does
not suffer.
When we see those tell-tale signs, it’s time for Frontline.
I apply it to the back of each cat’s neck and the medicine works its way through
the fur, killing the eggs and the adult fleas. Within a day or so, the itching
stops and the cats are good to go for another month. The fleas have met their
match.
There isn’t a human Frontline to solve our fleabite problem
from telemarketers, religious recruiters, door-to-door salesmen and corporate
answering systems. So the best solution is a full frontal attack.
During the 1970s, I owned a mail order business where I
published a newsletter with tips on how to teach reading and English as a
Second Language. The two inside pages of the newsletter were filled with the
products that we were selling—The Phrase
Reading Kit, Multicultural Stories, The Spanish Oral Reading Test and
Multicultural math posters. We were selling these products because we were passionate
about educating people to use the cutting-edge materials we developed.
The problem with our business was that we were
undercapitalized, and we ended up having to borrow from a credit card. We tried
to get a better rate, but the bank wouldn’t comply. It was time for a full
frontal assault to bury those money-sucking fleas.
How do you fight a bank? Well, I decided to write to the
bank president’s mother. So I crafted a letter and explained to her that I was
a teacher and I knew many kids like her son. These kids would hoard their
marbles and not let the other kids play. I told her that I was sorry that he
never learned to share. Then I told her how much my family was suffering
because I had to pay such a high interest rate. When I finished the letter, I
put it in an envelope with a note asking the Bank President to give my letter
to his mother.
A few weeks later I received a copy of a letter addressed to
the Bank President’s mother.
Dear Mom,
No matter what this
man thinks, I Iove you and you did a great job in raising me.
He went on to tell his mother that by law he could charge
those outrageous interest rates. I didn’t have much luck with this man.
On another occasion, I wrote to another bank president and
explained how our partnership was changing the world. He provided the
leadership and being a long-term customer, I had provided lots of his cash
because of the exorbitant interest charges. I pleaded for him to reduce
interest rates for customers who had been with the bank for several years. Much
to my surprise, he agreed and the bank developed a new interest level for
long-term customers. My full frontal assaults landed me a 50% success rate, and
at least I had a good story from the failure.
Whether it’s fleas or people trying to sell you stuff, you
have to take action. As my cats taught me, you have to do a Frontline Attack to
keep the fleas under control.