Small Bites: Pizza Lunch, Stuffed Peppers, Chuffed or Gutted
Notes from a weekend of cooking
It’s Small Bites, a few quick thoughts on what I’m eating right now — not full essays, just some bites. Last time around we talked about chicken soup, mocktails, and film. This time we’re talking pizza, peppers, and television.
Pizza at the Whole Foods Hot Bar
It’s such a shame that my hundreds of undergraduate dining hall meals were eaten one after the other. At the time they felt like a slog. But now if you gave me the chance to go eat at my university dining hall one day per month I would be overjoyed. Rolling up to a big buffet and making a nonsense plate of food that doesn’t go together should not be a joy reserved only for nineteen year olds.
As a full adult, the best most of us can do is the Whole Foods Hot Bar. Oh, how I love to have lunch at the WFHB! I love to fill up a little box with mac and cheese, broccoli slaw, and chipotle chicken thighs. I love to pick a can from the wall of La Croix loosies — especially a flavor I would not normally get like Cherry Blossom or Key Lime.1
As a university student, I was also very fond of getting a slice of dining hall pizza, and the WFHB delivers in this regard as well. It might be one of the top pizza-by-the-slice places in Victoria? The slices are huge, and if you only get one it comes out to less than five bucks. There are not a ton of sub-five-dollar lunches in this town, but this one delivers.
On Saturday I had a busy day of cooking, and I was already at Uptown so I stopped by the WFHB for a slice of feta and roasted vegetable pizza. Delicious! Great meal!
Work In Progress Recipe: Stuffed Peppers
It’s easy to write about home cooking projects that come out great, or about disasters. But in reality, most things wind up in the middle. This weekend I made stuffed peppers for a dinner party. I did not use any sort of recipe, I just vibed it out.
They came out well, and my guests seem to have enjoyed them.2 I had some notes, though:
What worked:
I made a stuffing out of puy lentils, rice, caramelized onions, and parsley (plus a lot of seasoning and spices). I wound up making way more stuffing than I had peppers, so I spread a bunch of the stuffing in my braiser and nestled the peppers in. This was great — the outside got crunchy in a tahdig-like way.
I par-cooked the rice for fifteen minutes before adding it to the stuffing; this was definitely the right call. I thought it came out perfectly cooked.
What could have been better:
Next time instead of starting 1:1 with rice and lentils (uncooked, by volume) I’ll go more heavily towards the lentils. The whole thing was starcher than I would have liked.
Even if the stuffing is seasoned well, the peppers tend towards being bland. I’d like to try brushing the peppers with a spice/salt/oil mix before stuffing them.
I’m going to keep working on this, so be on the lookout here for a recipe sometime over the summer. I think it would be especially good with the fantastic Sweet Tooth peppers that we get here in BC in the late summer, though those introduce some format challenges because of how long they are… I’ll figure it out.
Chuffed or Gutted
I have a piece over in the great newsletter One Thing today, about my love of Great British Bake Off style shows, and my general interest in the format. You can check it out here:
The only post-2015 La Croix flavors that are good enough to buy a full box of are Beach Plum and Guava São Paulo — I feel very strongly about this.
If you were at my house for dinner on Saturday feel free to share opinions!
wow i was just thinking about how much i love buffets actually, because they drill down to a single decision to "eat or not eat" (we love simplicity sometimes!!!)
having witnessed these peppers IRL, I love the idea of seasoning the peppers with oil and spices - I think the flavor would really pop
also shout out to Green Cuisine as another cafeteria-style buffet reminiscent of uni (and not just because I ate there a lot while in school)