homegrown peppers in an easy and tasty lunch - a post on semi-homemade stuffing

I harvested the last three peppers from my vegetable garden this weekend before we had our first frost and used them in an easy lunch. I had made some out of the box stuffing in chicken flavor that needed some additional spice. So I sauteed the chopped peppers with some sweet Italian sausage and then added the peppers to the stuffing and with a sausage and some breadsticks, it turned out to be a really nice lunch.

homegrown peppers add a nice little pep to the out-of-the-box stuffing

Speaking of stuffing, I used to make my own stuffing for Thanksgiving, from scratch with chestnuts and all. But over the years, I have noticed that starting with a decent boxed stuffing and adding additional ingredients to improve the flavor is a lot easier and the end-result is equally satisfying. I like to start off with Stove Top Chicken Flavored Stuffing because the flavor is very mild and the stuffing has a good consistency that you can adjust by varying the amount of liquid you use. I also, depending on what additional flavors I add, leave out the margarine to keep the fat content low. The recipe above involved the chicken-flavored stuffing because the peppers were also mild and sweet and the mild flavor of the stuffing really brought out nicely the sweet pepper flavor that went well with the mild Italian sausage.

In the past, for my semi-homemade stuffing I used a variation of the recipe here. Adding some onions, parsley, chives and chestnuts to the Stove Top Stuffing and the result is a totally homemade stuffing flavor. I like my stuffing with lots of herbs, so I add plenty of chives and parsley to mine. Keep in mind that I start off with the chicken flavor. I am not sure that I would want to add the Stove Top Herb version since that stuffing has already plenty of flavor on its own. The trick to making boxed stuffing taste homemade is to use a mild box stuffing and add herbs and onions or celery to taste.