Pasta Night: Baked orzo with eggplant and mozzarella (but keep reading for the replacement dinner involving Eggos)

An epic failure! I should have known that a baked pasta dish where you don't have to pre-cook the pasta was a disaster in the making. But I trusted Smitten Kitchen and tried out this recipe for pasta night: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/09/baked-orzo-with-eggplant-and-mozzarella/   

The pictures on her blog are beautiful. Stretchy cheese, toasty roasty eggplant, fresh herbs. But somehow, my dish ended up with all of the orzo in weird gluey clumps and some of it still uncooked and crispy. The bites with lemon zest were reminiscent of cleaning products and the bites without were super bland. Eli bravely ate his whole dish and even said he would take some for lunch tomorrow. I gave up pretty quickly.

BUT THEN we made second dinner and it was the best! Eli made a fried egg and sauteed a chicken sausage from Trader Joes (the best). If you look closely at the picture, you will see that the egg is heart-shaped. 

And then we put it on Eggos with barbecue sauce. And that, my friends, was a good dinner.