I’m going to start this post off because I feel like a proud parent. Instead of a child though, I’m proud of Chelsea and her recipe for these stuffed peppers. If I had a bumper sticker made it would read, “Proud Parent of the Best Stuffed Pepper Recipe.”
Chelsea: My grandmother could cook. In my family, everyone agreed she could make anything taste good. Actually, it was probably said in more colorful prose, with a slight Midwestern drawl, a purposeful nod of the head, and an expletive or two thrown in. Sometimes there’s really no better way to show respect for good cooking.
Maybe her way with food was borne out of the Depression, where it took real creativity to make humble rations taste great. At her funeral, my grandpa reminisced about how, during especially tough times, she could feed a family of six on a can of tuna, and still no one could top her on flavor. Perhaps it’s that she cooked with love. I don’t recall seeing many cookbooks around the house; maybe she was just a natural.
Funny enough, I can’t remember whether I ever ate one of her stuffed peppers, but I definitely remember watching her make these for my grandparents’ dinner when I was hanging around her kitchen after school, which I often did. The peppers were red or green bell, most likely from the garden, the bread crumbs ground from day-old bread. Of course, there was bacon. As for the rest of the ingredients, I could be forgetting a few things. She didn’t write down most of her recipes, so as with many of her dishes, I have to go by memory–of smell, sound, and just being there.
For the peppers, and for those memories, I remain grateful.
