Vegan, Gluten-Free Meal from Aldi’s Ingredients: Grilled Eggplant and Portobello with Spaghetti Squash and Homemade Sauce
I’m happy to disprove the notion that healthful, flavorful, meals are expensive or have ingredients only available at specialty stores. Yes, that can be true, but generally not in my house. I get by just fine with Aldi’s as my number-one favorite grocery store. The remainder of my staples come from an Amish bulk goods store near Hazelton, Iowa, and Fareway, a grocery store chain in Iowa.
Tonight we enjoyed “grilled” eggplant and portobello mushrooms with spaghetti squash and homemade tomato sauce.
I’m not much of a recipe girl, but here goes…
Get your veggies ready for grilling (January in Iowa, so I used my broiler):
- Clean an eggplant and three portobello mushroom caps. Slice eggplant. Place vegetables in a lidded container.
- Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with Italian seasonings and garlic powder.
- Shake up the vegetables and set aside, shaking every five minutes or so.
Prepare the sauce and spaghetti squash:
- In a pressure cooker with the lid off, saute a diced onion, diced green pepper, and ~3 cloves garlic.
- Add a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes. Aldi’s has organic now!
- Season with dried basil and oregano. I used about a dry teaspoon each. I also sprinkled in some red pepper flakes.
- Cut the stem off of a spaghetti squash. Cut in half and scoop out the “guts.” Place in pressure cooker, overlapping if necessary.
- Close the lid on the pressure cooker and bring to full pressure. Cook for 8 minutes. Then, set aside to let the cooker cool naturally.
“Grill” the vegetables under the broiler while the sauce and spaghetti squash cooks. My husband does not like spaghetti squash and can tolerate gluten (or so he thinks) so I prepared some linguine for him at that time.
Overall a very flavorful meal! And cheap, of course, because all of the ingredients came from Aldi’s! I’m so happy that they are adding to their offerings of produce and organic foods. They even have kale now!