Our farm share has left our house with a surplus of eggplants and apples. This led my wife to put out a call on Facebook for any recipes calling for a surplus of eggplants and apples.

She received a number of creative responses, and at left you see the end result.

It's a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and apples.

Now, I've had different variations of grilled cheese before - anytime something has avocado I jump at it, and I'm pretty sure at some point I've had a grilled cheese with avocado. I've especially had it with bacon. (Bacon and tomato is a favorite.)

The apple and bacon was a new combo, and it was fine. But when it comes to using up our surplus of apples, I'm really looking forward to my wife's apple crisp...or maybe an apple pie. Those are apple creations I just love.

You might notice, though, the griddle upon which that grilled cheese sandwich is cooking. I'd like to tell you a little bit about that. (I should mention before this tangent that my wife also cooked up some eggplant and potatoes together and sliced them up like fries. That was pretty good.)

About ten years ago or so, my wife and I were engaged, and we went to places like Macy*s to register for our wedding in anticipation of being showered with gifts.

It was surprisingly fun for five minutes or so, because they give you a scanner and you get to scan items into your registry. There are only so many plates and cups and silverware sets you can scan, though, before it gets boring. So my wife took over after a few minutes, and I think she even went back to a couple of stores by herself to complete the registry.

But one thing caused me to take notice: this griddle.

I stopped and exclaimed, "We have to have that!" She laughed. She thought it was nonsense.

But, in the first of what would become a ten-year pattern of initially poo-poohing and then not only accepting but loving my forward-thinking ideas, my wife pulled a full turnaround.

I'll admit - the griddle sat untouched for a long time. A year, maybe two.

But then she started to use it to make pancakes. Occasionally it was used for burgers. Grilled cheese. Since we've had our daughters it makes an almost once-a-weekend appearance...at the very least it's out a few times a month.

And, I don't mind telling you, that griddle may just be the most-used item of them all from our wedding gift registry.

It's a great underdog story.