This week in our produce basket, some of the things we got were a very large spaghetti squash, eggplant, mushrooms, and fresh basil. I sauteed the mushrooms, eggplant, an onion, and the fresh basil with 2 pounds of ground beef. I then threw the mixture into the crockpot, along with a very large jar of Ragu sauce from Sam's Club, and added some extra seasoning (I always doctor the canned stuff up more
).
Around dinner time, I cooked up the spaghetti squash in my instant pot (this is one of THE BEST instant pot hacks - it saves SO MUCH TIME!!!). Not everyone in my family likes spaghetti squash, so I also cooked up some red lentil pasta for those that didn't want the squash with their meat sauce.
In the past, I haven't liked eggplant very much, but this is definitely a very good way to use it! It absorbed all the flavor of the meat sauce, and since I had chopped it up in smaller chunks, it really blended in with the sauce well. I still have another eggplant left, so I will have to figure out what else to do with that one.