Goodbye 2009

I have begun to say goodbye to 2009. It was a fairly good year. Any year that involves a puppy, a wonderful boyfriend, sharing my food life with the world, and lots of chocolate can not be a bad year at all.

I think one of the most important lessons of 2009 was how smart my mom really was. The dinners that she made us every night were edible, normally tasty, and mostly wholesome. She knew what she was doing. One of my favorite of these meals is stuffed peppers. My mom made stuffed peppers and stuffed cabbage on a fairly regular basis when we were little. It was an easy meal, tasty, and could be adjusted to each of her picky eaters.

Stuffed Peppers:
1lb of ground turkey (if you are anti-ground turkey (Matthew), you can use ground beef)
1 cup of rice, cooked
3 Green Bell Peppers, cut in half (If you aren't a pepper fan stuffed cabbage is the same basic concept only you stuff the mixture in a cabbage leaf.)
Salt
Pepper
Adobo
32 oz. can of tomato sauce

Mixed the ground turkey, rice; add some salt, pepper, and adobo. Cut the peppers in half the long way. Stuff the peppers with the meat mixture. Place the peppers in a 13x9 inch pan. Pour the tomato sauce over the peppers. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. If you are worried about doneness, cut it in half. You pour the extra tomato sauce over pepper so no one will know.

If you have a few brats on your hands, like my brother and I were as children, you can take the meat out of the pepper once it's all cooked. You can also not pour the extra sauce on top. Mom says the pepper flavor is still there, but I still don't eat the pepper. This meal is great because it is cooked exactly the same, but can presented a few different ways. Makes the pickiest eater think they are being treated special and in reality they aren't. My mom was not into actually making different meals, but she was all for tricking us into eating the food she made.

I hope you are enjoying your end of the year festivities. For all who care, I am still waiting on one of my grades because my professor is a nut job; but everyone else gave me an A. That would bring my GPA to a 3.972. GROSS!!! Oh well I'll get over it. If the nut job gives me a B I'll probably have a post full of tears; lets hope it just doesn't happen.

Enjoy the pictures and my continued look back on 2009 and this crazy decade that took me from PA to JWU to Oregon to Maine to Boston. Hope you are overindulging till the New Year!

Happy Eating!!!

Emily