Eggplant meatballs....or ....polpettine di melanzane

A couple of days ago, I wanted spaghetti and meatballs...but I wanted to go vegetarian.  So, I went through my recipe file, and pulled out one of my old favorites - eggplant meatballs!  I happened to have all the main ingredients in my house - eggplant, fresh parsley, breadcrumbs and garlic!  So I went to work!
These take about an hour to make total; you can either fry them or bake them, I chose to bake them this time (I usually fry them - trying to be healthy). 
These are dense and have substance to them; my husband normally doesn't like eggplant, but he gobbled these up! 
My sister and I love eggplant; I think it is one of those unfairly maligned vegetables, possibly because of its unfortunate name in American English; I think it might get better press if we called it by its Brit term, "aubergine", or by the Italian "melanzane". 

I used whole wheat fettucine with these; I think next time I will go with half-wheat fettucine, the 100% whole wheat made the pasta taste a tiny bit cardboardy.

The green you see there is some broccoli florets I added to the sauce to veggie it up!  There's a whole wheat roll there on the side - Stop N Shop has these wonderful frozen whole wheat rolls - you bake them for about 10 minutes - warm and crispy and perfect!