Did you know that one of the best ways for you to reduce your carbon footprint and help fight climate change is by going vegetarian.  Apparantely the meat industry adds almost as much carbon dioxide as the automobile industry.  They say that even skipping meat one or two days a week would be a big help.  And skipping meat a few times a week is actually pretty easy when you know a lot of easy eggplant recipes.

Now everyone is probably familiar with eggplant parmesian sandwiches.  If you have already fried up the eggplant and you have some tomato sauce already made, it’s very easy to make a eggplant parmesian panini.  But breading and frying eggplant is a big chore.  Definitely not something you want to do when you’re getting ready to go to the office and trying to make a homemade lunch.  If you’re the kind of person that can plan ahead and fry up a nice batch of eggplant on the weekend, then you’re all set.  I’m not one of those people though.

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Well Thanksgiving has come and gone and if you’re like me, you probably still have some leftovers taking up valuable space in the fridge.  Well, this next panini recipe is not only a tasty sandwich, but it’ll also help use up some of those Thanksgiving leftovers before they go bad.  I call this turkey sandwich recipe the Thanksgiving Panini.

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The best way to add new flavors to plain old sandwiches is to add roasted vegetables.  But if you have never roasted vegetables before it may sound a little intimidating.  Not to worry, most roasted vegetable recipes are very easy to make.

First thing you need to choose is what vegetables to use.  If you’re having a hard time figuring out what goes well together then think about the stuff you’ve eaten.  Onions & peppers go great on sausage sandwiches but did you know that they’ll liven up a turkey sandwich too?  How about mushrooms and onions.  You’ve probably had that on a steak sandwich but they work great on panini too.  Just pick what you like and go with that.

If you want to experiment a little bit, then why not try this roasted vegetable recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 Large Red Onion
• 3 Cloves of Garlic
• 3 Red Bell Peppers
• 1 Eggplant (1/2 pound)
• 1 Yellow Squash (1/2 pound)
• 1 Zucchini (1/2 pound)
• 1 teaspoon Thyme
• 1 tablespoon Basil
• 1 teaspoon Oregano
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Cut up all the vegetables into chunks or slices of relatively the same size.  This is important because you want them to cook evenly.  Place the pieces in a large bowl and add the olive oil and the herbs.  You want a nice coating of olive oil so use at least a quarter of a cup.  Then mix up the vegetables and place them on a cookie sheet.

Roasted the vegetables at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  Occasionally stir them up maybe three time total while they’re cooking.  If you have a BBQ, this is a perfect recipe for using a BBQ Wok.  The onions will caramelize and add a great flavor to the other vegetables.  And the oil will cause some flare ups for some extra flavor as well.

Using a roasted vegetables recipe like this one is great to do on the weekend and then use through the week on your panini sandwiches.  Even a plain ham or turkey panini will turn into something special with these vegetables.

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The Monte Cristo is another great sandwich recipe that you can easily be converted into a panini.  I used to love ordering a Monte Cristo as a late night snack at my local diner.  The combination of the sweet French Toast style bread and saltiness of the Ham and Swiss Cheese is great at any time of the day.

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Two of my favorite things to put on a sandwich are goat cheese and roasted peppers.  So when you put them both on one panini together, great things happen.  A roasted pepper and goat cheese panini is another easy panini recipe with a taste that is greater than the sum of it’s ingredients.
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