I bought some bell peppers to have with my Bulgarian
feta cheese that I told you all about last week. Well,
the green peppers were not that nice and they were $1.99
a lb. And the red/yellow/etc. pepper were too expensive
at *3.99 a lb. Then I saw a bag of marked down peppers -
2 nice yellows, one orange, 1 red, and 2 green for $1.99!
I used one of the green ones with the feta and then I
was thinking about just cleaning and dicing the rest and
putting them in the freezer. But I hated to waste fresh
peppers that way and the I thought, "I haven't had stuffed
peppers in a couple of years!" So, I cut them in half and
cleaned them and I was pretty sure they would keep in the
coldest part of the fridge until Sat. Friday night I stopped
at the store and got ground beef and some grated Romano.

Since I hadn't made them for so long I wanted to make sure
I wasn't forgetting anything important so I looked up the
recipe in Joy of Cooking. I hate that stupid book. It
didn't even have a real stuffed pepper recipe. Well, it
had several recipes for peppers stuffed with things but
not the basic, all-American stuffed pepper where you make
a mixture of meat and rice and various other things and
then stuff the peppers and bake them for about 45 min. to
a hour. Theirs called for blanching or parboiling the
peppers and then stuffing them and baking them just
briefly. The filling was pre-cooked. That is *not* the
way to make stuffed peppers! So I got out Betty Crocker
and there was the right recipe. I also checked Good Housekeeping
(another of my standard/basic cookbooks) and the New York
times Cookbook. Neither one of them has a recipe for
stuffed peppers either! What the hell?

So, here's what I did - not following a recipe. I cooked
some rice (jasmine) and let it cool. Mixed it into the
ground beef. Added eggs, Romano cheese (my own idea), some
oregano, basil, parsley, freshly ground black pepper, finely
processed onion, pressed garlic, and mixed it all up. No salt
as I figured there would be enough saltiness from the cheese.
Then I added enough bread crumbs to get the right consistency.
I filled the pepper halves and made meatballs with the leftover
mixture. I baked them all and then put the meatballs in a
bag in the freezer to use at a later time.

When I served the peppers I used a little more Romano to
sprinkle on top. Boy were these things good! I'm saving the
rest for after T-day as I am also trying to finish up a
pot of pork stew that I made a couple of weeks ago.

Kate