Feeling hungry is reason enough to cook, but having a farewell dinner for friends before they leave for tour where home cooking will be a distant memory is an even better reason. I'd been sitting on this recipe for months, drooling at the photographs. Stuffed peppers were a staple in my house growing up, but the ground beef really turned me away from them as I got older. Replace that with quinoa and you've got yourself one mighty delicious pepper.
I'm not a believer in following recipes. In my opinion it's overall stressful and really takes away from the whole process of creating something that's your own. I'm not knocking recipes and don't get me wrong, using a fantastic recipe as a base is key but it's far more satisfying to play around with dosing and ingredients. Plus, it's the ideal way to play into my unattainable dream of becoming a mad scientist.
This recipe in particular had all of my favorite vegetables included but I decided to throw in some extra ingredients I had hiding in the depths of my fridge. The innards alone could have been a meal [I'm surprised they even made it into the peppers considering the lengthy cook time] but cooking them in the peppers for an hour really let the flavors soak in. The peppers wound up being incredibly tender. Yellow and orange peppers brought a different taste rather than just sticking with the standard red and green [boring!]
After a huge meal of grains and vegetables, Cardamom Baked Pears were the perfect dessert. The key to all cooking is timing [and making sure not to dig too far into the wine before the prep is done] Tossed these puppies in once we started eating and they were done just in time for our stomachs to have digested the main course and move onto something spicier and sweeter.
And the only thing greater than a farewell dinner is the feast you get to create for the homecoming.
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