Green Peppers – God’s Cruel Joke
I feel like a kid in a candy store when I wander through the produce section at the grocery store, lingering among the artful and meticulous displays of God’s colorful bounty. I often say that I have never met a fruit or vegetable I didn’t like – except for green bell peppers.
I want to like them, I really do. Green peppers, together with their more mature red, orange, and yellow siblings, are among the healthiest foods around as they are loaded with Vitamin C and other important nutrients. And, in my opinion, bell peppers are also the most beautiful items in the produce department with their vibrant colors and shape. In fact, I believe they should be called “crown” peppers rather than bell peppers – slice the pepper crosswise and the top half resembles a royal crown. They deserve their position on the throne in the produce aisle as their physical attributes and culinary versatility lends themselves to creativity in the kitchen, as well as the cornerstone to beautiful presentations. They are the penultimate in food aesthetics. But, to me, quite sadly, with their pungent and bitter flavor, they are the Devil in disguise.
My dislike of green peppers goes back far and deep. My mother had an odd obsession with green peppers and she was bound and determined for me to like them, as well. She was known to sneak them into soups, salads, and casseroles, believing that I would not notice. One time, when I was a young girl, my mother made a beautiful lettuce salad for a summertime lunch with fresh garden vegetables and topped with my favorite Dorothy Lynch* salad dressing. I moved the vegetables around with my fork, searching for any signs of green pepper.
“Mom, are there green peppers in this salad?” I asked.
“Uh, umm, no, I don’t think so,” she replied.
“Then what is this?” I asked as I pinched a small, dark green suspicious vegetable between my thumb and forefinger and held it up for inspection.
“Oh, that’s cucumber,” she replied as she averted her gaze.
I took one bite and knew I had been tricked. Waterworks flowed. My mother, with her merciful soul, allowed me to pick out the offending vegetables and add them to her salad. The sorrowful look in the face of her defeat is one that continues to swirl in my memory when I see green peppers on a salad.
Yes, sometimes she would be sneaky, but other times, she would unabashedly make green peppers the star of the show. My mother had a fairly limited culinary repertoire, but one of the half dozen or so dishes she would make often was stuffed green peppers. The filling of ground beef, rice, tomatoes, onions, and seasonings was easy enough to enjoy as the flavor was only slightly adulterated by its green pepper vessel. But, after eating the stuffing, what does one do? In my family, no one was allowed to leave the table without cleaning every morsel off their plate, so stopping short of eating the entire green pepper shell was not an option. I would sit there and stare at my nemesis, then literally hold my nose and get through it.
Oddly enough, one of my favorite foods is roasted red peppers. Jarred versions are staples in my pantry as I use them frequently in casseroles, appetizers, and pasta dishes. I will even roast fresh red peppers in the oven myself; they are so worth the time and effort. Red peppers are simply the mature green peppers, with orange and yellow in between; they’re like the wise senior citizen who has gained the wisdom to know the importance of sweetness and the error of its ways while in the young green stage of life. Red peppers in their raw form are somewhat tolerable. But roasted? Now that life changing!
My eldest son, Jason, who is a very picky eater, loves green peppers and has actually declared them to be his favorite vegetable. I am awaiting the DNA test results to make sure he wasn’t switched at birth.