Stuff a Peck of Peppers!

My fall posts are generally written waaay ahead of time because I'm so busy in the fall that I'd just have to abandon this thing if I didn't work ahead. This week, I had a little bit of extra time. (Thanks to online classes, I don't waste nearly as much time going places!) I was considering using a pre-written post for Saturday, but I kind of felt like using my time to look at an old cookbook... Didn't have a ton of time, though, so I decided I'd do an end-of-summer-produce post IF I could be lazy about it and not have to do a ton of scanning. Well, I picked stuffed peppers as my theme, picked up The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking (editors of Favorite Recipes Press, 1972), and holy shit! I hit the jackpot.

The picture seems to show four different styles of stuffed peppers, but according to the recipe section, this is just the basic model:

I'm pretty sure only the bottom right is actually the basic Stuffed Bell Pepper one, though-- one late-summer staple of bell peppers stuffed with another treat that is just ending its season: fresh sweet corn! Add in the omnipresent ground beef and onion, and you've got the end of summer in a handy green cup.

The bottom left looks like it's the child-friendly Macaroni-Stuffed Peppers. 

Perhaps they're made even more child-friendly by hiding the tomato bits under a plainer layer of macaroni and cheese, despite the instructions' insistence that everything be mixed?

I'm frankly not too sure what the top two are. The one on the right is too nondescript for me to know what it has-- just some ground beef-looking bits with orangish and tannish stuff-- and the one on the left looks like it's full of ham and pickles, but there are no recipes for peppers stuffed with ham and pickles. Maybe it's deviled ham and celery?

Who knows? At least the deviled ham makes this one sound Halloween-appropriate. 

We're not even halfway through the book's offerings, though! If I want to continue with the German theme from Wednesday, there are German-Style Peppers.

I kind of expected them to have gingersnaps and/or sauerkraut inside, but I have no idea what makes these German. The soggy hard rolls?

If the corn in the original Stuffed Bell Peppers doesn't seem sufficiently seasoned, the Corn-Stuffed Bell Peppers add some chili powder and tomato to the corn. (Plus, they're vegetarian if you don't want meaty peppers!)

Continuing the theme of veggie-stuffed veggies, if corn is going out of season, carrots will still be available:

Most appetizing line of the recipe: "Mixture will be like paste." Yum.

Or you could go with potatoes plus cheese and salted peanuts if carrots and corn seem to sweet:

My childhood self would probably have been most impressed with the cheese/ rice/ bacon option:

Especially if the cook forgot about dumping a can of mushy gray-green beans around the peppers.

And that child-self would have been least impressed with the Barbecue-Stuffed Peppers, given my feelings about condiments. 

I know someone out there is capable of enjoying peppers loaded with onion, Worcestershire, vinegar, dry mustard, catsup, and brown sugar, but that someone isn't me!

Those who want to be midwest-fancy can go for Shrimp-Stuffed Peppers.

They even get a dash of hot sauce!

Those who don't want to put on airs can go for the generic-sounding Savory Green Peppers. 

If it's too hot to bake (but not too hot to boil a big pot full of peppers while making a tomato-meat sauce in another pan), then No-Bake Stuffed Peppers fit the bill.

And finally, for lucky number 13 on this list, the recipe with the math problem.

All the other recipes with ground beef mixed with other fillings call for a pound of meat plus other fixings to fill four large peppers. For some reason, Curry-Stuffed Green Peppers are supposed to fill four larger peppers with only a quarter pound of ground beef. Yes, there's a half-cup each of rice and peas, plus a small onion, but the No-Bakers have space for a full pound of ground beef, plus a can of tomato sauce, a cup of rice, and 2/3 of a cup of cheese divided among four peppers. Is the two teaspoons of curry powder really supposed to be so potent that the diners won't notice that their peppers are mostly empty?

I'm going to leave you with that little mystery, and go off to celebrate the fact that I could be semi-lazy and still write a new post in mid-September for a change! Woo!