Three words so many people find difficult to say out loud.  Ever. Especially when followed by “You were right.”  Quite honestly, I don’t see the trouble.  Indeed, I might even say them too often so you should take my admission with a grain of salt*.

Nonetheless, I was very much wrong, and my vegetarian coworker was very much right.  Allow me to explain…

<flashback>

JJ***: I’m making dinner for some friends this week, and one of them is vegetarian.  What should I make?

VC: Make stuffed peppers.  They’re delicious!

JJ: I’ve never made stuffed peppers.  How do I do that?

VC: Hollow out bell peppers, stuff them with rice and vegetables and spices and cheese and bake them.

JJ: But how?  Won’t I mess them up?

VC: It’s pretty much impossible to mess up stuffed peppers.  Seriously.

</flashback>

Having seen some of the lunches that my vegetarian coworker brings in, if she says they can’t be messed up, I believe her.  … so I nervously set to work.  The stuffed peppers were a hit.  One friend brought wine, the other a berry pie, and the dinner was an absolute success!  We used real glasses and cloth napkins and pretended to be sophisticated.  I’ve never been so proud.

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

I’m not giving you a recipe because you don’t need it.  My vegetarian coworker was absolutely right, and a recipe would only enable your lack of creativity.  I will say this: I used couscous, and I was very glad I did. 

* This phrase (”grain of salt”) is of some interest to me given that a coworker used it just this past week, immediately questioning his own usage by saying “What does that even mean, anyway?”  I immediately saw reason to pull out this book which was given to me by my brother at my high school graduation**.  When I arrived home that evening and I saw the book on my bookshelf, I remembered this interaction but couldn’t, for the life of me, remember the phrase in question.  When I used it just now, I was so excited by the opportunity to make use of an amazing but generally useless book, that I ran upstairs immediately.  Interestingly, the book had only this to say “to view a statement with a skeptical attitude”.  I like to think that I already understood the general meaning of the phrase and thus used it in an appropriate manner in this blog entry.  More specifically, I was interested in the origin of the phrase, which was more easily explained by wikipedia.

** Yes, this is possibly the coolest gift one can possibly receive at graduation.  It should further be noted that in the last 5-6 years, my brother has given me a variety of amazing gifts.  Just the other day, a friend complimented the shirt that I was wearing, and it made me smile to be able to explain that it was a birthday gift from my brother.  Brothers everywhere, be inspired and give your sisters better gifts.  Seriously.

*** A friend of mine used this as a nickname for me this week and it has, apparently, caught on.  Please note that my using it here in no way reflects my support of the name.  I use it only to create balance in relaying a conversation between me and my vegetarian coworker (VC).  The use of one initial looked odd to me.

P. S. (and please note that this is strikingly different from the use of asterisks above) <nerd>I use a PC at home and a mac at work, and I’m always surprised by how easily I switch keyboard commands.  The control vs. command key issue never really bothered me.  On the other hand, about a dozen times while editing this post, I’ve tried to Function-backspace, which hasn’t worked at all.  </nerd>

A friend of mine had me over for dinner a couple months.  He’s a dear friend, at the time still in his senior year at Carolina, and while I love him tremendously, I wasn’t expect anything gourmet as I walked up the stairs to his second floor apartment.  He opened the door with hands dripping with soapy water.  I started browning the ground turkey for the “meat” sauce.

<sidenote>I absolutely despise most red pasta sauces.  Generally, a white sauce has enough butter and/or cream that you may not notice inadequate flavoring, but a red sauce is not nearly so forgiving.  Meat can help but never cure a failing sauce, and most of the time, I find red sauces to be nothing more than glorified ketchup that we cover our noodles with.  No, thanks.  A pasta sauce needs time, vegetables, spices, and preferably some wine to really bring out the richness of the tomatoes.</sidenote>

Before I knew it, I was that person I’ve always wanted to be.  I was hunting through his fridge for carrots, grinding pepper into the sauce, and sprinkling in some dried basil.  The sauce was delicious (in my opinion), but the experience was life-giving.  I took something bland, and with a little creativity made something I loved.

At any given moment, any number of things can occur in our lives.  There are jobs, friends, family, chores, and sadly, crises.  And although I find the phrase “bringing it back to the table” extremely annoying, I think there is something unique and special about food.  It demands that you stop… for just a moment, and enjoy a very temporal pleasure.  During the meal, time seems to stop.  You talk about what you eat, you look at what you eat, you hear the sizzle of the oil in the pan, you feel the textures on your tongue, you smell the food as it cooks, and most of all, you taste it.  It’s an incredible sensory experience, and I can’t imagine how I forgot about this.  For far too long, food has been a chore, something I’m supposed to do and not at all something I enjoy.

Since you’re reading this, I doubt you’ve forgotten how much you love food.  But whether you’re eating pre-made chinese on your couch, enjoying the smell of scones baking, or nursing a beer as you write a blog post (all of which I’ve done tonight, I’m proud to say), take a moment… make something… and just enjoy it. 

My darling sister is resolved that a cook cannot take credit for a dish unless the recipe is original.  Although I most heartily disagree with that sentiment, I do find myself ridden with guilt when serving a dish that is “semi-homemade”.  Nonetheless, I think you, the reader, deserves to know how frequently I “cheat”, and how impressed everyone is with the food.

When I was in high school, I found a recipe for stromboli dough, and slaved in the kitchen an entire afternoon in order to serve a fresh stromboli, stuffed with veggies, meat, and cheese.  For a couple years, at least, this recipe was frequently requested for birthday dinners and special occasion meals.  Each time, I’d spend 4 hours waiting for dough to rise, kneading, more waiting, rolling, stuffing, more waiting, baking… and then, frequently risk a doughy center (read: disaster!).

… then one day, I grew up, packed my bags, headed to the big city of Chapel Hill, enrolled in college, and wised up.  In the deli/bakery of your typical grocery, they have pre-made pizza dough for a dollar or two.  Roll, stuff, bake.  Period.  It smells every bit as delicious as homemade, and when it comes out of the oven, people “oo” and “ah” as though you had spent those 4 hours covered in flour.  … and if you want to let them keep on believing it, I certainly won’t tell.

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

… so that’s it.  No recipe.  Stuff it with any kind of cheesy, veggie, meaty goodness you see fit.  Brush with beaten egg for a nice, shiny, golden brown crust.