hit run miss

Hit: Getting tickets to see the Avett Brothers in Baltimore in October.

Miss: Adopting some virus that knocked me out for about 36 hours from Tuesday night to early Thursday morning. X took care of me while I stayed home yesterday; temperature taking in the morning, water, tea, lots of ibuprofen on the counter.

Hit: Winning the Avett Brothers lottery after purchasing my tickets and getting bumped from eighth row, right side to front row, dead center.

Miss: Two nights of Baking and Pastry. Truth be told, I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in making apple pie on Tuesday night so I sort of bailed out; virus took me last night.

Hit: Two evenings of not doing much but The Eleven hanging around in a very quiet house with only our time invaded by two ‘cats’.

Miss: Our planned visitor who missed the flight in London and has rescheduled for a few weeks later.

Last Sunday night we had the cabal of visitors over for pizza night and my idea of a stuffed pepper pizza had mixed results (go figure?). This month’s Saveur has stuffed peppers on the cover – as if a Saveur with Greek food as the main topic wouldn’t attract – so I decided to do the roasted/stuffed peppers and actually put them on the pizza over a white sauce, olive oil, and about 2 lbs. of wilted spinach. I came across one of the smaller farm stands at Eastern Market on Sunday morning that was selling some beautiful red and green peppers so I pounced on about a dozen for my experiment. I know a bit about capsicum, I’m no expert, and these looked perfect for the job: I didn’t take pictures and I haven’t looked them up so simmer down. They were a good size, they smelled hot/sweetish, and I had a good feeling about them throughout the roasting/stuffing stage. By the way, once they were done – prior to the pizza being made – they were held until the last 6-8 minutes of pizza cooking time and then dramatically (?) placed onboard. What I ended up with was a pile of stuffed peppers that were too spicy for what I intended. The fix? X pointed out that if you just squeezed out the filling onto your slice and set aside the pepper guts then you got just the right amount of spice, all the stuffing, and your head didn’t explode. I immediately seized on this idea of giving the customer a colorful, spicy, and participatory pizza for their enjoyment. Problem solved. Tasty across all categories once my devilishly genius idea was set in motion…or discovered.

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