Veg Recipe of the Week: Eggplant Stir Fry

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to eat less take out and more home-cooked food. I have tons of recipes pinned to my boards on Pinterest, so my goal is to try at least one new recipe each week. I want to find a balance between healthy and fast/convenient meals. Also, I just got a brand new slow cooker for Christmas that's much bigger and fancier than my old one - which was missing buttons and handles - so healthy eating should be even easier (thanks Kathleen!). From now on, once a week I will be posting easy, healthy, vegetarian meals that went over well with both of us, so that if I ever am feeling low on inspiration it will be easy to look back and see what worked well in the past.

This week's recipe is actually a little old, but it was so fast, simple, and delicious that I thought it would be a good starting point for the Veg Recipe of the Week series. One thing I really like about this recipe is it's a one pot meal, thanks to the microwaveable rice, so even the clean up is fast.

Eggplant Stir Fry with Brown Rice and Mandarin Spinach Salad

Ingredients for Stir Fry
- 1 small to medium eggplant, chopped into 1 inch pieces
- 1 bell pepper, cut into strips
- mushrooms, cut into quarters
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1 tbsp. olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- stir fry sauce
- 1 tbsp brown sugar or honey
- red pepper flakes
- 1 package microwaveable brown rice

Directions

1) Heat the oil over medium heat and add the eggplant, pepper, and mushrooms. Sautee the veggies for about 5 minutes, then add the onions and minced garlic and sautee for a few more minutes. Spray with Pam if needed.

2) While the veggies are cooking, mix together about a cup of the stir fry sauce with the honey and red pepper flakes to taste.

3) Microwave the rice for 90 seconds.

4) Add the sauce to the veggies and remove from the heat. Stir rice into the veggie mixture:

For the Salad:

I used 2 cups of baby spinach mixed with 1 sliced granny smith apple and 3 mandarin oranges, plus 1 extra mandarin orange squeezed for the juice. I also used about a tablespoon of Archer Farms brand Lemon Ginger Dressing. I'm very into fruity salads at the moment, so this really hit the spot.

Even with chopping all the veggies, this meal easily takes less than 30 minutes (and I'm not a fast chopper!) We both liked it a lot, and there was enough for seconds, plus leftovers for lunch the next day. If I'm ever feeling more ambitious, I'll make my own sauce using this Eggplant with Garlic Sauce recipe.