Red Peppers

The best way to prepare red peppers...

...Is with fire!

The best way to eat red peppers...

...Is with meat and cheese!

Incidentally, adding meat and cheese is the best way to eat almost anything.  Adding bread will complete the trinity of food hyperdeliciosity and will immediately render anything edible into something incredibly delicious.  There are no exceptions.

But seriously, roasted red peppers over an open flame is really the only way to go.  Just hold the pepper over the fire until the skin on each side is blackened.  Then scrape off said skin, core and seed the pepper, buy some salami, and enjoy.

Note:  Hyperdeliciosity is not a real word.

Note 2:  There are probably some exceptions.

Meatballs: a.k.a. Magic Nuggets

I was at the grocery store and I wanted some meat. In my life, this is a frequent occurrence. Apparently Stop'n'Shop sells a product called "Meatloaf Mix": a blend of ground beef, pork and veal. I saw it and immediately thought: meatballs.

Now, sometimes I like recipes, but for something like meatballs, I'd much rather just mix some stuff up and go for it. So any values I report here are going to be approximate:

1 lb. ground meat

1 egg (this is not approximate; there was exactly 1 egg)

~1 cup bread crumbs

~1/4 cup grated parmesan

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

~1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning

salt

pepper

a splash of cold water

Here are all of the things just mentioned together in a bowl:

I then mixed all this crap together and started heating up some fat in a pan. If you're ever trying to decide between olive oil and butter, I have just one answer:

BOTH.

Shaped the balls and put 'em in the bowl. I have this nasty habit of shaping meatballs of ever-increasing size. I suppose worse things have happened to better people.

Don't they just look lovely?

So basically I just let' em brown for a while over medium heat. They stuck a few times, so I probably should have left the heat a bit lower. Oh well. Live and learn.

Finished meatballs:

The one on the far left is halved, so you can see it's done all the way through. (I would have left them rare, but remember, this meat has pork in it. Gross.) Final judgment: these meatballs were delicious. The pork and veal definitely added some richness, and the next time I make meatballs, I'm gonna reach for one of these blends. Now that we have Whole Foods, nearby it'll probably be easier to come across more ground meats--I've heard that beef, pork and lamb blend well together as well.

And I also made broccoli, which is not as notable, because it's not meat:

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