(Vegan) Eggplant Meatballs

Now that it's Lent, I have to have a meatless meal on Fridays. Of course, I am allowed to have fish but being pregnant, I have to limit how much fish I eat. We also had to eat meatless on Ash Wednesday. This means, last week I needed two meatless meals. I did do fish on Wednesday but I wanted something non-fish for Friday. I decided on this recipe. I actually had everything on hand, except the eggplant but that just happened to be on sale at the store that week! My husband doesn't like eggplant so I was hoping for the best.

I used garlic powder instead of real garlic but I believe that is the only change I made. I was surprised you couldn't taste the peel of the eggplant but it sure saved a lot of work. We served this on ciabatta bread with spaghetti sauce and I think it turned out great. It didn't taste like meatballs to me, but I'm not sure it was supposed to. David wasn't impressed with it but at least he couldn't taste the eggplant. We had it leftover the next day and he thought it was much better. I will be making this again sometime!

Our mixture seemed wetter than the pictures showed and we took the full 30 minutes in the oven. The bottom's got a little browner but they actually tasted really good. The rest of it wasn't as crunchy as I thought they were supposed to be but I still think it worked. Next time, I may add more bread crumbs to thicken it up. Comments on the recipe suggested using half breadcrumbs, half parmesan cheese, so that would be an option too (if you aren't keeping it vegan). 

My one year old daughter even liked these and we struggle to get her to eat any vegetables. We are pretty sure she thought they were actually meatballs when we gave one to her. Otherwise, she somehow is smart enough to know which part of the dinner is a vegetable and picks that part out. We can't figure out how she knows but she does. This is a recipe to sneak more veggies into her diet.

I really recommend serving these with sauce, but I never eat meatballs plain either. I will mention that my daughter ate hers plain (to keep her less messy).