More Fun with Peppers

Subtitle: Cooking Up Trouble Part II.

When we last left our hero (um, that’s me), she was in the midst of unsuccessfully roasting farmers market peppers. OK, enough with the third person. While the peppers steamed themselves in the tin foil. I turned my attention to dinner.

First, I chopped part of an onion (not from the farmers market, because they didn’t have any that day) and put that in some red wine. It was sweet red wine my sister Cheryl had brought over and not finished. I don’t care for sweet wine, and Cheryl has not been back so I thought I’d use it this way.

While the onion cooked I squeezed a couple of cloves of garlic (in fact, I bought that at the Ilion Farmers Market a couple of weeks ago) through the garlic press and set the timer for 15 minutes. I read somewhere that you should let crushed or chopped garlic breathe for 15 minutes. I’m not sure if it brings out the flavor or the anti-oxidant qualities, but I figure, it doesn’t hurt anything.

I chopped two of the unroasted peppers. Easier to de-seed when you cut them in more than half, but still what a lot of seeds! Somebody commented on my last post and said to leave in the seeds, they don’t hurt anything. I must try that next time. I put the peppers in with the onions, added the garlic after 15 minutes. Then I put in some ground beef Steven had thawed earlier, added a can of tomato paste, one of mushrooms, worcestershire sauce, basil, oregano and cumin. I must confess, I used dried basil and oregano, not fresh from my container garden. I’d really had enough chopping things by this time.

When Steven got home I cooked elbow macaronis to go with it. I put parmesan cheese on mine. So some of the skinny green peppers from the farmers market came to a good end. And I have some left in the freezer for further culinary adventures.