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Sunday 05 July 2015 [Note: these posts constitute ideas and draft material for a book. I appreciate being quoted in excerpt and any links back but I request that readers do not use the material in whole or without credit. Thank you.] Yesterday I made stuffed peppers. I bought 4 lovely yellow peppers at a very good price and planned the stuffing to be as economical as possible, consistent with deliciousness. Brad is partial to ground beef so I used 1/2 lb of it but I mixed in a 1/2 lb hot Italian pork sausage (which is about 50% less expensive than beef). Of course, I fried up a diced onion and several minced cloves of garlic first and put the meat into the frying pan afterward. I added tomato sauce that I'd bought on sale (and shelved en masse) along with the red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. While making the pan-part of the meal, I boiled a generous hand-full of rice for including at the end point of the recipe. [Note: I purchased 10 tubs of about 2kg (1kg=2.2lbs) lbs each of Uncle Ben's rice because they were $6.99CAN (about $4.20US) each and contained a collective $10 each of coupons off of any chicken purchase...eg. 2 $4 off coupons in each container. We buy chicken as a staple. That means I received the rice for free and made a few dollars off every container.] I used more red pepper flakes than usual because the flesh of yellow peppers is sweet and permitted a hotter balance. I had already boiled the peppers -- stripped of seeds and stringy flesh -- for about 5 minutes so that they were semi-tender. I stuffed them with the mixture, poured some remaining tomato sauce on top, and baked them in my small countertop oven for 30 minutes. Brad liked the dish, and I have 3 more stuffed peppers in the freezer for a fast lunch. Frugal tip of the day: in my area of the world, beef is now outrageously expensive and I have chosen to mitigate the expense of ground beef by mixing cheaper ground meats into recipes such as meatloaf, meat balls, etc. My preferred mixed meat -- when I wish to preserve the beef taste -- is ground chicken because it contributes little flavor of its own and takes on whatever other flavors are added. In Italian dishes, such as meat balls, I prefer ground pork. | |
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