The first edibles from our garden were a couple heads of lettuce.  Two small bunches of leaves are the yield thus far.  A garden is many things but most definitely a lesson in patience.  Pride, as well.

These turned out to be not the sweetest or butteriest of leafy greens, but they were my lettuces…that I’d watered and sheltered from the toxic slime of snails and pulled from the ground 15 minutes before supper.

In two+ years.  I made it in honor of our two year anniversary of moving abroad.  It tasted like home and yet better.

But not for me.

I don’t do water above the ankle line until it’s 26°C (that’s 78°F).  One of our neighbors feels strongly that I should be braver about things.  Well…

Rufus helps himself to a bigger water bowl…

One Sunday in February we drove to the market in Pedreguer that’s two-thirds rastro (flea market), one-third glorious, stomach stirring foodstuffs like these deeply dimpled red peppers.  That’s a pile of love courtesy of the nightshade family that luckily you need not fear, let me tell you.

We bought a couple; stuffed them with brown rice, a mince of beef and pork, and a mixed dice of carrots, courgettes, mushrooms, and onions.

While the rice cooks, you saute the mince and the vegetables.

Then, you introduce the sauteed goodies to the rice.  Let them shake hands with some salt and pepper and dried herbs like thyme and/or oregano and/or parsley.   Spoon the stuffing into the top of the peppers which have been divested of their stem and seeds and white membrane.

Pour a glug of olive oil into a baking dish, place the peppers in the baking dish, give the pepper skins a good polish of olive oil before putting them under the oven grill at 350 degrees.

I honestly can’t tell you how long the peppers need to cook except to say that it might be 25 minutes, it might be 40 minutes.  Your eyeballs are your guide.  The pepper skins should be wrinkly and soft, looking a bit like on they’re on the verge of collapse, and a little charred and oozing juice from the odd pore or ten.

Pour yourself a nice glass of table wine.  No need for high falutin vino because stuffed peppers aren’t.

While the wine acclimates to the new surroundings of it’s cup, carefully place a pepper on a plate.  Slice it open.  Take in the spellbound half-moment that follows as the rice mixture spills every which way, steam curls into your face, and the aroma of herbs merged with capsicum smack your nose in the rightest of ways.

After that, there’s nothing else to be done but apply knife and fork, choppers and mandibles in honest pursuit of honest belly joy.