I was shifting some things around in the freezer when I came across some ground beef I had bought at the farmers' market from Valentine's Country Meat in Orange, VA and should probably think about using before it developed freezer burn. So I popped it into the fridge to defrost without a thought about how I would use it.
I don't cook red meat very often and since I spent so many years as a vegetarian, I don't have a repertoire of recipes for different cuts of meat. What I do have is all kinds of vegetables spilling out of my refrigerator. You open the door and as likely or not some bag of greens or a bunch of radishes are going to come crashing off the shelf to land at your feet due to the incredible amount of food crammed precariously around the half gallon of milk, some beer, bottles of seltzer water and wine not to mention the condiments. Yes, my fridge is full and still I go to the farmers' market and buy more veggies.
So, as I contemplated the ground beef, I needed to consider something to use up some veggies as well. After a bit of contemplation and web surfing for recipes, I decide on stuffed peppers and immediately headed out to the West End Farmers' Market to see if they would have any. (hm, maybe this isn't the best way to solve my problem of produce abundance). Luckily, I found some. (I also found some cherries, potatoes, and Anaheim peppers, oh and a couple of Japanese eggplant. So much for produce reduction) These were not big round peppers ideal for stuffing but they would do.
I started by chopping up the last of a bunch of onions I had bought at J & W last week and throwing it in a saute pan with some garlic that I had picked up from Westmoreland Berry Farm. Next I added an Anaheim pepper that was beginning to change to orange/red for a little color. As the onion started to soften I threw in a quarter of a cabbage which had been languishing in the crisper and let this cook down a bit.
I moved the vegetables to a bowl and then browned the beef with some more garlic and some Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. I mixed the browned meat with the vegetable mixture and mixed in a bit of Blue Ridge Dairy smoked mozzarella, I discovered behind some Metala Greek Salad leftover from last weeks' lunch salads ( I bring in lunch for three of my colleagues since we barely have time to breath let alone go out and get lunch and this time of year I find myself making large batches of grain and vegetable salads). I then stuffed the filling into peppers I had sliced in half (their unusual shapes and small size made this seem the best method of stuffing) and baked them in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
I ate these for lunch with a bit of the green and yellow bean salad with chunky tomato dressing (from Cooking Light) made from beans and tomatoes (the first of the season) from Three Way Farm and feta from Blue Ridge Dairy that I was taking to my supper club this evening.
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