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>