Stan Horwitz wrote:
> So, after work last Wednesday night, I went to the local Wegman's (a
> huge supermarket) and I bought the fixings to make homemade pasta salad
> for a party I attended yesterday.
>
> I bought one green bell pepper, a medium onion, and two packs of those
> grape tomatoes (because they were on sale). I picked up a jar of light
> mayo and some white vinegar.
>
> I got home and I put my groceries on the kitchen counter in the plastic
> bags in which they were packed. I did not buy anything that needed
> refrigeration so I just left the stuff on the counter for later use.
>
> My plan was to make the pasta salad on Friday night after work to serve
> at the pot luck party I attended yesterday afternoon. As it happened, I
> didn't get home from work until pretty late on Friday because I went out
> to dinner with a friend after work.
>
> By the time I got home, I was tired and I wanted to fiddle around with
> Windows Vista, which I installed on my MacBook Pro that afternoon, so I
> went to bed and started to try out the new OS on my laptop. Before I
> knew it, it was midnight and I was way too tired to start any cooking,
> so I never made the pasta salad.
>
> I ended up running to the store on Saturday morning prior to the party
> and I purchased a couple of containers of pre-made pasta salad. So, that
> left me with an onion and a green pepper sitting on my counter. I didn't
> cook anything for dinner last night, nor did I even enter my kitchen at
> all yesterday.
>
> So, after I spent today studying for the final exam for a graduate
> course I am taking, I decided I would use that onion and green pepper to
> make up a batch of my world famous tuna salad to eat for dinner tonight
> and tomorrow night.
>
> I got out that green pepper and much to my surprise, it had mostly
> turned orange. Why would it do that? Anyway, the pepper looked fine,
> otherwise, so I diced it up, and the onion, and I dumped the vegetables
> into a big bowl, added three big tablespoons worth of the low fat mayo,
> a splash of vinegar, some Penzey's dried parsley, Penzey's onion powder,
> and Penzey's celery seed, plush a bit of ground pepper. Then I mixed the
> tuna up thoroughly and let it sit while some rye bread reached a toasty
> state. The result was quite good, but I didn't know what leaving a green
> pepper in a dark room in a plastic bag (which was opened) would cause it
> to change color! I guess that's where those different colored bell
> peppers come from. So what would cause a bell pepper to turn red or
> yellow?
>
> Anyway, I guess I should sign off for the night and get back to my
> studying. Sigh!

Green bell peppers turn another color to ripen, generally red but
sometimes to an intermediate stage of yellow then red. The green is just
an unripe pepper. When fully ripe they are loaded with vitamins and are
actually better for you and the taste changes to a much better flavor IMHO.

George