Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers

I have this thing about recipes...I have a really hard time using them, specifically the part that obliges me to follow a specific list of steps and, particularly, instructions.  I like to just go free-form and use what I have, rather than try to shop for obscure ingredients or buy more food when I have plenty at home. This at times leads to great success, as with many Rachel Ray recipes--she's creative as all get out, but her recipes never seem to be tested or fully thought out, but rather hastily thrown together.  As a result, they often seem unbalanced, under-seasoned, or just plain incorrect.  Other times...well, we've had to throw out a few meals here and there. 

Usually, though, I'm much more comfortable just going AWOL and freestylin' it.  If I know I want to make something in particular, I'll usually browse a bunch of collected recipes online or in cookbooks, and then either write up my own with certain elements from each that I like, or just use the knowledge gained as inspiration while I go at it in the kitchen. 

These stuffed peppers, on the other hand, were a mere idea that was rounded out by whatever I found in the fridge.  I knew I wanted to do some sort of stuffed pepper or relleno, so I bought poblano peppers last time i was at the store.  I cooked up a bunch of brown rice earlier in the week (side note: i love keeping cooked rice in the fridge. You can use it for so much without having to cook & cool--stuffings, fried rices, rice salads, etc), so I knew that would be a component.  I had lots of miscellaneous veggies and greens in the fridge--zucchini, kale, mushrooms, carrots--and knew I could stuff a good number of them into a pepper. 

Despite the crappy camera phone's washed out colors and unappetizing tones, this turned out so good, I'm now writing a recipe for it.  It is one of those insanely healthy meals--mostly veggies, a good assortment of colorful veg, very little fat, whole grains--but the part i like is that it doesn't TASTE healthy at all!  Recipe after the jump. 

Trying New Things in 3, 2, ...

Chalk this one up on the "why haven't I made this yet" category:

Asian Noodle Salad
(Thanks Pioneer Woman)

It has everything I like--asian flavors, check.  cold noodles, check (love pasta salads).  cilantro, big check.  tons of veggies thrown in, check.  Gorgeous, check.

Posting it for the good of the order, and to remind myself to try new recipes!  don't just make the same old shtuff over and over and over...

That said, I'm 99% sure I'm making my famous southwestern turkey burgers tomorrow...I'll try new things later.

What's Spanish for Soup?

 The idea of cold soup really freaks me out. Something just seems...wrong...about it. Yet I'm inexplicably drawn to it. I have recipes torn out for cold watermelon soup and cucumber soup, and even a chilled dessert berry soup. I suppose when you really think about it, there isn't a good reason that soup is supposed to be warm...except that it's supposed to be warm, dang it!  That's just the way it is!

When I get over these bizarre battles waged between warring factions inside my head, I realize that, freaky though it may be (and I blame vichyssoise) they're actually pretty good.  Especially during the summer, when similarly inexplicable soup cravings come knocking, and I'm forced to answer them.

I visited Spain in high school, and there I had a bowl of simple gazpacho that was served with a cutting board of different chopped up veggies, cheese, croutons, and the like. It was perhaps the perfect meal--a base of sweet, tangy, richly orange, smoothly blended tomato soup to which you could add any number of things, making eat bite more perfect than the last.  Since then, my nostalgia for that trip, and plenty of bad versions of gazpacho, have convinced me that it's hard to find a good one state-side.  More often than not I get a bowl of what seems to be salsa, or chunky V8, or just any other gross image you can think of. (Although Emilios, if my memory serves me at all, does a great little bowl.)

But a recipe from a Martha Stewart I ripped out last summer looked, at least, a lot like what I remembered.  It was a fairly straightforward recipe, but of course I can't make it that simple.  Instead of crustless, day-old bread, I just used a loaf I bought that day, and maybe took the crusts off half, cause I'm lazy.  I didn't make the croutons, either, cause I like to dip hunks of bread into soup, warm or cold. Used regular cuke, not english, and didn't have sherry vinegar so I used rice vinegar instead (wine might have been a better substitution).  And I used like, less than 1/2 of the oil it called for.  And it's still delicious! Since I don't have a blender, just a cuisinart, it could have been smoother, but after a few bites I just didn't care.

Had a bowl for lunch today with some of the cut-off crusts, a baby bell cheese, and two more delicious plums.

Both the original recipe and my small changes are after the jump.

Plum Lucky

English muffin, toasted, spread with a teensy bit of peanut butter and jelly, with two mini yellow plums. I don't remember the variety--something that started with an "s".  I'm sure that's very helpful to all you plum enthusiasts out there.

I suppose I am a plum enthusiast.  A friend once told me he'd never tasted a plum (seriously, never?  a plum isn't an odd sort of fruit, is it?  perhaps he grew up in prehistoric antarctica)  For me, though, it's been all plums all summer long since before I can remember.  They're up along the top of my fruit food chain, along with pears, nectarines, and cherries.  At the farmer's market this weekend the plums were out in full force, and one vendor had probably six varieties all lined up in cute little rows....how do you choose among the plums?  Sweet, juicy flesh and tart skin combine into the most perfect fruit. And I like to suck on the pits, too.  You know, that last sentence taken out of context could easily have come from a Harlequin bodice-ripper novel with Fabio on the cover...

Having said "plum enthusiast," now I have to picture what a plum enthusiast would do with their time and how they would celebrate their love for plums.  Tree-climbing festival? (Top plum wins!)  Plum-mashing contest? (on second thought, that internet video makes me rethink this train of thought...)  Perhaps I'll just stick to celebrating the humble plum the way the Korean do---by making it into plum wine.

Or, paraphrasing Mitch Hedburg, I don't want to be known as a plum enthusiast.  I'm just a girl who likes plums.

I love summer, part duex

Is there anything more beautiful than a knobby, ugly heirloom tomato?  If the outside scares you, just slice one open and see the world of seeds and veins of color that run through it.  These babies are grown for flavor, not appearance.  The difference between these is marked--I can't eat most supermarket tomatoes even on sandwiches, as they're so mealy and sour and, well, just icky.  But these, these I can't stop eating--plain, with a bit of salt, or drizzled with olive oil and fruity balsamic vinegar and, well, it's just about as good as it gets. 

We ate these alongside some grilled bbq chicken and some stovetop beans, but really these are the stars of my show. 

This week's haul

1 bunch beets (for the parents arriving this weekend!)
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch rainbow chard
1 lb red potatoes
1 head garlic

After having to work through last week's pickup and missing out on the bounty, it really feels good to have veggies in my fridge again!  While wandering through the farmer's market I also picked up a pint of blueberries, a pound of heirloom tomatoes, and a pint of tart yellow plums.  I love summer!

I grilled last week

But friends, let me tell you...I was not meant to work over 15 days without a day off!  SERIOUSLY!  I mean, come on.  I barely cooked, I barely slept, I barely resembled human for over two weeks, and all that I can think about now that I'm finally in teh warm afterglow of a true weekend is...I need a vacation!  One short month....

Anyway, I did manage to turn the grill on sometime last week during our prolonged 98-degree+humid heat spell.  Because nothing quite says summer like burgers, and if it's going to be sauna-like outside then I say let's celebrate it!  It will be in teh negatives, snowy and ice-covered before we know it, which makes a little sweat not quite so bad after all.

These weren't special burgers, just some leftover hand-formed patties I had frozen a while back, plus some vinegared cucumbers and grilled summer squash sliced that were tossed with chipotle oil and seasoned salt.  Damn, but doen't that just look like summer?

Now, if I only knew why I've been craving soup for the last two weeks...perhaps gazpacho is in order!