Dinner Plate #50

 

This is probably one of my greatest triumphs in using what I have rather than shopping for just the right thing: A bell pepper stuffed with a filling made from smoked tofu and kalamata olives (more on that below), pasta in a garlic cream sauce with peas, roasted butternut squash, and sauteed shredded brussels sprouts.

This meal is still me--there are veggies everywhere, so much so that I amused myself when trying to figure out whether I had enough vegetables here and was struck with the realization that a stuffed pepper is a vegetable, too. What? Main dish veggies? Witchcraft! But it was also borne of the necessity to use the things I have, father than having the things I sometimes want. And it was delicious. 

2025 has been a weird year in many ways, but I'm glad that I'm using it to learn new habits! And one of those is taking more liberties with recipes. The stuffed peppers were inspired by a recipe at Lazy Cat Kitchen, but I didn't have shallots, sun-dried tomatoes, soft cheese, or pesto. No worries! I just subbed in onions, kalamata olives, and non-dairy mozzarella, but I did use the end of the oil I had left from a jar of sun-dried tomatoes so there was still that sun-dried tomato flavor in some ways. That got that jar out of the fridge, along with the end of my kalamata olives from who knows when, a bit of smoked tofu I had open, and some bell peppers that needed using. And I finished off a bottle of white cooking wine.

I don't claim to have hit on the olive substitute on my own. I ran an internet search and found a blog post suggesting kalamata olives, and I was excited because I had them on hand and also just plain love olives. But if you ever find yourself needing a substitute for sun-dried tomatoes, often, I think olives could work--they're intense and savory, after all.

I still had a bit of the garlic cream sauce I've been using to make pizza lately, but I didn't want to make pizza this time. So I cooked up some corkscrew pasta and tossed it with some pasta water, the sauce, and some petite peas. That, plus a shake of seasoned salt, made for a perfect pasta side.

While I was cooking the peppers, I roasted the about a third of a butternut squash I still had on hand. I thought about roasting the end of my big bag of brussels sprouts, but many of them required so much trimming that I went in another direction, cooking shredded sprouts on the stove in a 50/50 mix of olive oil and vegan butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, and finished off with some balsamic vinegar. This is apparently Ina Garten's technique. It's not my absolute favorite way to have brussels sprouts, but it is very quick and easy and tastes pretty darn great, so I probably will have them again under similar circumstances.

I have no complaints here! This was all delicious. I would have it all again happily, though of course, I won't make this again, because that's what happens when you just use whatever is on hand--you rarely eat the same things over and over that way! But I'm inspired every time I hit it out of the park like this, because it means I can probably do it again.

I see so many stuffed vegetables in my future!