August 21, 2018 Lunch – Chicken and Shrimp Salad. Dinner – Great New Recipe – Sausage and corn stuffed Mini-sweet Pepper Casserole

August 21, 2018 Lunch – Chicken and Shrimp Salad. Dinner – Great New Recipe – Sausage and corn stuffed Mini-sweet Pepper Casserole

I ate so much yesterday that I did not eat breakfast.

At 11:30 I made a salad with Romaine lettuce, diced red and green tomatoes, 1/3 cucumber, 1 boiled egg, the last piece of Bobby Flay chicken diced, three shrimp diced, ½ avocado diced, and 1 green onion sliced dressed with Caesar dressing.

Suzette came home at 4:00 when Shane from Dalton arrived to fix the fridge.  Shane installed the new LED board and magically, we had lights in the fridge.  Wonderful..

Later in the evening the fridge started making ice.  If this continues it will be miraculous.

I went to get my bike at 4:40 and returned at 5:15.

There was good news on all fronts today.  For Suzette received three new referrals for rooms.  The S and P reached an all time high and I garnered  an all time high for my portfolio, so a good day for me.
And Manafort was convicted and Michael Cohen plead guilty, so a good day for the country.

Stuffed Sweet Pepper Casserole

In our exhilaration Suzette came up with a great dish.  She seeded about a dozen of the sweet peppers I bought at Smith’s yesterday and stuffed them with sausage and corn kernels.  Then she grilled them to loosen their skins.  Then she made a casserole with layers of the spaghetti sauce I made last week, spinach, the stuffed sweet peppers,
then more  sauce, and finally chunks of fresh mozzarella.  She baked the casserole in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Here are pictures of the process and the final result.

                     First layer of spinach and excess corn and sausage stuffing

                                                  Grilling the stuffed peppers

Final step, Covering the peppers with spaghetti sauce and fresh mozzarella 

                                     The resulting dish after 30 minutes of baking

                                                 The dish served without any toast points

     The dish served on toast points

The casserole exceeded all expectations!  It was wonderful with a good balance between meat (the meat in the sauce and the Brat sausage stuffing) and vegetables (the tomato sauce, the corn kernels in the stuffing,  and the sweet peppers).  Suzette recommended serving the dish with toasted bread.  Since we had slices of Cimbatta bread left from the Neighborhood party, I toasted several and Suzette served the dish on them for me.  The bread absorbed the sauce and became part of the  dish.

I opened a bottle of 2014 Villa Pillo from Tuscany produced by Borgoforte.  It was smooth and rich with dark berry notes and went exceedingly well with the tomato, meat, and pepper dish ($10.95 at Costco, I think).  This wine has been rated from 88 to 91 and is a solid, well respected wine.  The 91 rating was by Wine Spectator, which thought it was a great value.



Here are the notes by the winery.

BORGOFORTE
Borgoforte is a small village in the middle of our Estate that proved too strong to conquer:
A strong village. Like our new red wines, it symbolizes the resilient and charming character of the Tuscans.
This wine is made in the “Super – Tuscan” style by adding Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes to the classical grape of Tuscany, Sangiovese.
Each year we add selected wines to the blend to bring subtle complexity and richness without losing the flavor of the traditional wines of Tuscany. Grapes picked at optimum ripeness ensure a wine which expresses itself in its ripe blackfruit components and full body. A true reflection of flavours which are a marriage of our soils under the Tuscan sun. For smooth body and elegance, the wine is aged in small oak barrels.We enthusiastically recommend this wine with pasta, red meats and game of any kinds.
Blend: Sangiovese 50%, Cabernet Sauvignon 40%, Merlot 10%.
Vineyards: Planted from 1991 to 1995.
Harvest: Merlot 10th and 12th September, Sangiovese 7th, 8th and 10th October, Cabernet Sauvignon 4th and 6th October.
Grapes are hand-picked and all varieties completed the fermentation separately.
Age in oak: 12 months in Taransaud french oak, one year used.
Total production: 70000 bottles.

I liked the wine and will buy more of it.

As a Suzette said, “I out did myself tonight.” And she did.  Somewhere inside of her she connected with the essence of Italian cooking.  We were lucky to have all the ingredients; a good spaghetti sauce, fresh sweet Italian peppers, fresh bratwurst sausage, spinach, and fresh mozzarella.

Willy came at 8:00 and ate a bowl of the new creation and really liked it also. And Willy continued the good news.  He gave two presentations on traffic planning issues today in his capacity as traffic planner for MRGCOG.  One was to the City of Rio Rancho.

I recommend this dish to everyone but especially those who are on low carb diets.

Bon Appetit