Antipasto Dinner

"If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?"

 George Carlin.

Quote compliments of my niece Linda, Thanks Linda.  Traditionally antipasto is served before dinner, this antipasto was a complete meal for our family.  Surprisingly, this was fairly easy to prepare and economical but the real reason to prepare this dish- its just plain delicious with a wide range of flavors.  

The night before our antipasto dinner, I prepared the marinated eggplants and mushrooms.  The next day we just grilled the fresh vegetables, baked the bread and my wife Linda arranged everything beautifully on the platters.   The Italian meats came from Trader Joe's and consisted of two packages with a nice variety of thinly sliced meats (each package sold for 4.95). We thought the Italian meats were very tasty and the fragrant aroma of these paper thin meats on a slice of warm fresh bread was memorable. 

Marinated mushrooms, Kalamata olives, Trader Joe's marinated artichoke hearts, stuffed green olives, cubed cheeses and Trader Joe's Italian meats on a bed of lettuce.  

We mixed some fresh rosemary, 4 cloves of minced garlic and several stems of fresh thyme in 1/2 cup of olive oil, which we used to coat the sweet onion, zucchini, green onions and tomatoe before grilling on medium low heat.  The zucchini took the longest to cook, and the tomatoes were done in under a minute.  The eggplant was also very easy to prepare, here is the recipe I followed, however, the eggplant slices (marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey) took longer than the 30 minutes listed to brown in my oven.  I'll post the marinated mushroom recipe tomorrow along with a picture.