Where have you been??

It's been 9 days since my last post. I think that was actually longer than the declared hiatus of a couple of weeks ago.

Honestly, I've just been too tired to post. I started doing a lot of writing on this blog while I was tired and later noticed I wasn't too happy with the overall quality. Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings. I blame Mrs. Carmen, my AP English teacher for two years of high school; I get upset when my writing isn't very good.

So yes, I've been cooking--I just haven't been writing about it. I've also been out of town...hopping on plane after plane to take rental car after rental car from hotel room to hotel room is exhausting. By the time I get up and connected to the internet, mindless chatter on AIM seems far more appealing.

But now I'm getting antsy, so I'm back on the block. Again.

A recent episode of Iron Chef inspired me to work on a recipe for stuffed bell peppers. Bell peppers are a recent addition to my culinary repetoire; for the first 22 years of my life, I absolutely hated them. You just couldn't get me to eat a bell pepper. Until one day a few months ago, something changed. No idea what, but now I love them.

So I poached a few bell peppers and stuffed them with a sauteed mixture of ground beef, rice, cheese, onions, and spices (I can't really remember which ones, but mostly the usual suspects: cumin, ground black pepper, some cayenne, and probably some coriander). Topped it with ground parmesan and baked it all at 300 degrees for about ten minutes. Served it alongside some hollowed out guava filled with mandarin orange slices. It came out decent, but it was one of the more visually appealing dishes I've done in a while. Very happy about all that. Pictures to come later, but my camera is back in DC.

Later tonight, my first experience with Maine lobster + why gluttony is bad for you. Very related.