I have posted before about what wonderful friends and Nia students I have. I have also posted about bell peppers. My love for both should be pretty well-known. 🙂 I consider my friends and the people who allow me to hold my Nia classes one of my most precious blessings. Between the group of them I have supporters, counselors, advisors, therapists, doctors, sounding boards, teachers, chefs, cooks, cheer leaders, advocates, lunch dates, chauffeurs, bakers, gardeners, and the list goes on and on. And bell peppers . . .well, with them there are endless snacks, meals, and yumminess.
But, as you are probably aware, not everyone likes bells peppers. You could be among the group of people who do not. You might be one of the people who like the red, but not the green or like the yellow but not the red. There are a lot of combinations in that group. Also, as you may know a bell pepper, when an ingredient in a cooked dish, tends to permeate the entire dish. There really is no “picking” them out if you don’t like the flavor. If you don’t like the flavor then you probably just avoid the dish entirely. While the flavors of the colors do vary, no matter what color is used the flavor seeps into the entire dish. I am not certain if this applies to raw foods, as in a salad, because I love bell peppers so I am not sure if it “gets all over” when it is not cooked.
Well, all of this leads up to two things; an amazing friend and what is in the inside.
First of all, I have an amazing friend who GREW bell peppers for me. She had read my post about different colored bell peppers and my mention of purple ones so when she was planting her garden she planted some purple bell peppers for me. When she told me she had some purple bell peppers for me my first thought was, “Oh, how nice! How could she give them away?” See? That is how much I love bell peppers, I wouldn’t think of giving them away. Then she told me she planted and grew them for me. I thought that was the nicest thing. Then after she gave them to me we were talking and she reminded me that she HATES bell peppers. ALL colors! No matter what. She thinks they all taste the same. I had forgotten, which is really probably just a mental block because she is such a vegetable lover and I love them so much, I forget that people don’t like them. So the fact that she HATES them (REALLY REALLY) made her planting them and growing them for me even more special to me.
Now, there are some funny things about these bell peppers. First of all they are very small. The idea was that they were purple so they are ready. I am not a gardener so I don’t know, except from what I have read bell peppers are ready when they get to the color you have planted. So it was decided that these were purple so they are ready. They are soooo cute!
The second thing is they are GREEN inside. That was a surprise to me. I had seen purple bell peppers before, in the store, but I had never actually had them, so the GREEN was a surprise. I cut it open while I was on the phone with the gardener that grew them and our first thought was that there were not ready because they were green inside, but a quick Google search revealed that the purple ones are green inside. Funny. All the other bell peppers are the same color all the way through, except the purples ones. I wonder why that is.
There you have it, an amazing friend and an amazing (well to me) bell pepper.
So now tell me? Bell pepper lover or hater? Which color do you prefer? Did you know that the purple ones were green on the inside? Since I can’t tell, does a raw bell pepper permeate a raw dish with its bell pepper flavor? Tell me, I really want to know!
Terre Pruitt's Blog 