Caponata: It just gets better and better.

Really, how can you resist? Purple is so in for fall.

I have been collecting so many late-season eggplants and tomatoes that I am beginning to suspect that I am turning into a hoarder. You know, those people who seem fairly ok when you meet them on the street, but then are discovered in their apartments three weeks after being crushed to death by their piles of years-old Newsweek, broken toaster ovens, Alf memorabilia, and a barco-lounger collection in an advanced state of decay.

And while I am happy to say that my apartment is clutter-free, my fridge is not. I buy an average about 1-2 eggplants a week, for no particular reason other than that I like their shape. Tomatoes? Don't get me started. I got so worried that come September, all the tomatoes would be gone, I started frantically collecting them like special edition Batali crocs.

But what to do with all this produce? There are only so many vegetables a girl can consume in a day, and unfortunately, Lorenzo likes neither eggplants nor tomatoes.

Finally, my fridge reached a breaking point. I either had to rent storage space for all these eggplants, or make caponata.

But of course, where to start? The Holy of Holies, Cook's Illustrated, had totally geeked out on traditional caponata, calling for V8 juice of all things to enhance the vegetable flavor, and detailing a wacky technique of microwaving the eggplant on coffee filters. I could imagine Christopher Kimball in his kitchen-lab, rubbing his hands in excitement at this groundbreaking new method of cooking eggplant with the least flavor possible. For once, Cook's Illustrated, you have gone too far. Your caponata is both overly complicated and lacking any character at all.

So, I decided to go the complete opposite direction. I put on my housecoat and my rosaries and made caponata the "old fashioned way"-- with more labor and olive oil than I would care to admit. While the the stewey, sweet-and-sour goodness was simmering on the stove I cleaned the house twice, yelled out the window for those hooligans to keep it down, and forced a cannoli on an unsuspecting child.

The beauty of caponata is that it is delicious when you first make it, but then it gets better every day, kind of like a bottle of fine wine, or a 401k. However, we all know that I am better at "living in the moment", which is why I dont own fine wines or invest. So, this caponata will be consumed happily over the next few days, even before its peak.