Food Memories, My Favs, Recipes

Sausage Stuffed Peppers

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During my kid years, stuffed peppers were in the regular dinner rotation at my dad’s house.  I hated them.  My step mom would fill crisp green peppers with a beef mixture in the morning, pop them into the slow cooker with some tomato sauce, and when we got home in the evening we’d find the crunchy green peppers had been transformed into a slimy mushy mess.  Back then, I had deep-rooted hatred for lots of cooked veggies—carrots, celery, and tomatoes to name a few—but cooked green peppers took the medal for most loathed cooked vegetable.  To my young taste buds, cooked green peppers had this toxic unnatural taste to them—like they’d been marinating in a puddle of Windex for a few hours.  It just wasn’t right.  Luckily, peppers were pricy so my step mom was more than happy to make me a meatball sans pepper for dinner while the rest of the family subjected themselves to green pepper poisoning.  I love a good meatball.

To this day, I’m still not a huge fan of stuffed green peppers.  As I aged and grew wiser, I discovered that other types of peppers could be stuffed just as easily and infinitely more deliciously than green peppers ever could. 

Case in point:

Sausage Stuffed Peppers (10 of 11)

Some of my favorite peppers to stuff are banana peppers, cubanelles, and Anaheims.  I usually buy whichever variety is the biggest (i.e., most stuffable) at the grocery store that day.

 

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My Favs, Ramblings

DIY Photography Light Diffuser on the Cheap

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When I attended the Food Photography Overhaul last month, I learned good lighting is the KEY to good photos.  I consider myself a pretty darn good student:  I listen carefully, I take notes diligently, and I try to implement my new knowledge as soon as nerdily possible.  Yet, as mentioned in my last post, I experienced some extreme frustration while trying to photograph those delicious balsamic pork tenderloin medallions in low lighting.  The need for light was obvious, but where the heck was it?!  I tried switching locations–the stove top, the living room floor, the bathroom counter, the laundry room–photo after horrible photo.  It was absolutely infuriating!

A couple of days later (once I had a chance to mellow out over a nice cheap bottle of red wine), the BF and I headed to Lowe’s to resolve this lighting issue once and for freaking all.

Here’s what we picked up:

DIY Photography Light Diffuser via Fervent Foodie

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My Favs, Ramblings

I shot that sh*t!

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Over the past two years I’ve developed an addiction to food photography.  The styling and the mood.  The subject and the props.  The lighting.  OMG the lighting.  I’ve drooled over photos in magazines, on blogs, and in cookbooks and I’ve snapped thousands of food photos trying (and hoping) to get shots that looked half as good.  I can count on one hand (that’s five fingers, folks) the number of photos I have taken that I truly loved (one of them being the pic I used for my header on the blog).

That is downright sad.

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My Favs, What I ate

Well that was…. odd…

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Tonight I pose an age old question.

If it looks like spaghetti and meatballs…

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and smells like spaghetti and meatballs….

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and twirls on your fork like spaghetti and meatballs…

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does it TASTE like spaghetti and meatballs???

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Hmmmmm……..

Tonight’s dinner was courtesy of 3 factors:

1.) Poor planning and insufficient food purchasing during my weekly grocery shopping trip.

2.) Insufficient time and energy to make a second grocery shopping trip.

and

3.)  3 random ingredients I happened to have on hand each of which was purchased (no doubt) during a hunger induced trip to the grocery store where lots of little odds and ends somehow ended up in my cart despite not being on my list and have since been sitting collecting dust (or freezer burn, as the case may be) in my kitchen.

So what’s a hungry gal to do?

Make spaghetti meatballs of course! Err… well sort of anyway.

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I’m guessing most of you probably consider diced tomatoes to be a fairly normal pantry staple.  I on the other hand LOATHE them (unless they are sufficiently masked in a recipe).  So tonight when I dumped the can of diced tomatoes into the pot I seasoned it LIBERALLY with anything Italian-ish in hopes of covering up their weird tinny taste.

Then I popped six Trader Joes meatless meatballs into the sauce and let it all simmer away.

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Next it was on to the Shirataki noodles. I first saw these on the Hungry Girl show on Food Network and have been anxious to try them ever since.  Tofu noodles?? 40 calories for the whole bag???   How could you not be intrigued?

The instructions said to rinse the noodles, drain, then microwave, and pat dry.  Easy enough!  I followed each step diligently, and as I went to pop them into the microwave I caught a whif of this funky nose curling scent.  I paused eyes scanning the room as I tried to determine what on earth had gone awry in my kitchen, and then I realized it was the noodles I was preparing to ingest.  They smelled.  Like garbage.  No… Like rotting fish that had been sitting out in the sun for a few hours.

Do to the stench, I decided it’d be best to give the noodles an extra super thorough rinse.  Funny how I was still more than willing to eat the noodles… I mean.. 40 calorie noodles, people!  You gotta be willing to give a little with the take!

After nuking them in microwave for a minute I dried the crap out of them (and most of the stench) with a few paper towels.

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I combined these 3 random ingredients on my plate, and VOILA!!  I had spaghetti and meatballs!  Or more appropriately named Tofu Noodle Substitute and Meatless Meatballs!  Has a nice ring to it, eh?

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Bet you’re wondering if it was any good huh??

Well this is what my plate looked like at the end of dinner:

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Guess that pretty much sums it up!  Clearly, the highlight of this meal was the meatless meatballs.  They got pretty soft once cooked (but managed to still hold together).  I might try baking them in the oven next time to see if they firm up at all.  Regardless, I’d definitely give two thumbs up on the meatless meatballs!

And the noodles were… ehhhh.. It’s not that they tasted “bad” per se, but they had this really ODD texture.  Really rubbery.  I guess it just felt wrong in my mouth.  Like my belly was saying “please, please, please for the love of all that is edible do not ingest those things!”

So I didn’t cuz when my belly talks, I sure as hell listen.

And now I think a cupcake is in order Winking smile

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