A particular aspect of living at the Jersey Shore is the abundance of food markets. Within a twenty mile radius we have our choice of mega-grocery stores, multiple “health” food shops, farmers markets, specialized boutique marts, and some of my favorite haunts—ethnocentric markets.
Saturday night in our neck-of-the-woods is date night. Suburban, hip-town America where the bars, bistros, trattorias and restaurants are packed with happy, hungry revelers.
Your day was meh. If you’re anything like me, you come home to the place where you can shut out the rest of the world, put on what ever old thing makes you comfortable, maybe a little music and maybe a glass of wine or a beer. Okay, feeling a bit better you peruse the take-out menu folder and shuffle through it like you don’t have it memorized.
Pizza? no. Chinese? no. Okay, I have a suggestion for you. Hit the pantry. Go in and pull out all of those jars and cans that have been sitting on the shelf. Look through the fridge. Is there a box of pasta? Spaghetti? Good. Here’s the recipe — and I use that word loosely — that I make when I want honest to goodness, simple comfort food in a hurry.
My palate is stuck in Paris…while my body is still happily enjoying what we call local summer at the Jersey Shore. This is the moment when most of the tourists and summer denizens have gone back to where-ever-they-live and the traffic returns to something we consider normal. After living here for a quarter of a century I can attest to the fact that this is truly a time to rejoice. But why are my taste buds wishing to hang out at a true Parisian café?
Stuffed peppers, yawn…the old fashioned dish I was sure to try to miss in my Mom’s kitchen. Green peppers stuffed with a mixture of hamburger meat and rice, covered in tomato sauce and baked. Not something we tend to crave, but toward the end of summer when the garden is swimming knee deep in peppers, it’s the poblano that puts a new spin on this tired old dish.
