Garden Bounty: Sausage Stuffed Banana Peppers with Fresh Angel Hair Pasta

Today's harvest is tonight's dinner. (Don't worry, I'll finish that series on saving money on groceries.)

My eldest sister passed this recipe on to me. Well, actually it was instructions more than a recipe. The instructions were: stuff a bunch of banana peppers with italian sausage, cover with a tomato sauce, bake til they're done & add some cheese to the top. That's what I did, honest...but I'll try to define it a bit better.

Ingredients

• banana peppers -- enough for your meal (I used 2 per person, plus a cherry bomb 'cause I wanted to see how it tasted cooked)
• Spaghetti sauce -- I used two jars, but that's because I know this will make two meals for us.
• Italian Sausage, hot or whatever you prefer. I used 4 links hot Italian pork sausage and 2 (much larger) links Italian turkey sausage. The turkey sausage was twice as large as the pork but contained only 5 grams fat/0 saturated. The pork sausage was much smaller and contained 15 grams fat/5 saturated. (I'm gonna wean my hubby off the fat one way or another.)
  
• 1/4 cup grated cheese. I'm sure fresh Parmesan or Romano would be better....even Mozarella, but I used colby-jack because it's what I have. It was fine.
  

First, cut & clean your banana peppers. Wash away those seeds and if you've ever had a skin reaction to hot pepper oils, wear gloves while doing this. My skin isn't bothered so much as my hands are like leather at this point in the gardening season. But I scratched my face with my fingernail and left a nice red welt that needed to be cleansed with an alcohol swab . (Alcohol will break down the enzymes that cause that burning sensation.) Even if it doesn't bother your hands, be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling it because it can irritate other body parts that you might touch...and some of those body parts might not like alcohol poured over them if you catch my drift.

Next, stuff the peppers. You can leave the peppers whole if they're large and shove the sausage down in them, but this was MUCH easier. I just squeezed the stuffing out of the sausage skins (dear hubby refused to photograph that) right onto the peppers and flattened it down with a knife as needed.

Pour a whole jar of sauce over the stuffed peppers.

Pop into a 325 oven for 40 minutes. (I think you can do 350 for 30 minutes, though.) During the last 5 minutes of cooking time, sprinkle the cheese over the top.

While that's baking, cook your pasta. (I found this store-bought fresh pasta MUCH lighter than dry pasta. I really liked that.)

I also sliced the cukes and cleaned the 'maters.

Here's how the peppers and sauce look when done:

And here's some mighty fine eating:

It was good. It was very good. I prefer the turkey sausage. Never liked the fattiness of pork sausages. Everyone approved. Everyone had seconds. There are still three servings for leftovers.

Okay, the littles didn't eat the hot stuffed peppers (they weren't hot) but they had pasta with sauce and turkey Italian sausage along with almost ALL the cukes and 'maters.

This guy ate most of the cucumber slices:

Read more...

Cats...We've Known a Few

Cats and kittens grace our home regularly. Since we foster them to get them ready for adoption (through the local Animal Assistance Society), we have had the pleasure of caring for nearly 30 different cats and kittens in the past few years.

I thought I'd share some with you.


Our first batch of kittens were the "steel kitties" (in reference to their colouring) who were, coincidentally, rescued from a steel mill. They were very sick when I got them. They had eye issues, upper respiratory infections, and funny poops. They had to be given lots of meds every day, eye ointment and cleaning twice daily, a couple nutritional supplements, and yes, I had to pay attention to their poops. That's right. I think I've seen every make & model of kitty poop in the past few years. As a foster, I got the trial by fire routine. No other kitties have been as needy since. I never minded, though.

We named two of them tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, these two were constant companions. Due to the ongoing brain damage I suffer as a side-effect of long-term parenting, I cannot recall the other three kitty's names.



One day, Tweedle Dee broke one of her legs. I don't know how it happened. She was an awfully curious lil bugger (as you can see above) and I suspect she climbed into the drop ceiling downstairs and then fell from it. It was a nasty break and I thought they were going to euthanise her because the surgery would have been a couple thousand dollars. Instead, they put her in a high cage (so she wouldn't stand to look at her people) and kept her there for a month. She returned to me perfectly healthy but no longer attached to Tweedle Dum. She was adopted within weeks of her return as were all of her siblings.

Can you see Tweedle Dee? (This is post recovery, by the way.)



There she is!


I'll tell you about more of our kitties in future posts.

Read more...