No photo this time, but for dinner tonight I made:
Past-Due Pepper Pasta
...which is basically al dente Rummo brand Fusili mixed (sans any tomato sauce at all) with ALL of the various sorts of peppers that have been left in the garden too long (I get a sort of modest second harvest for some veggies due to the pleasant clime here in SoCal but December is pretty late for summer plants regardless). Tonight that would include Shishito, Banana and Bell, along with one other kind of pepper with a name that eludes me as thoroughly and often as that of any of the half-dozen vintage brunettes I'm so fond of. The mystery pepper is Japanese in origin... like so many other things that I'm also very fond of: food, beer, wine, women, technology, temperment, cultural spirit, etc...
Of course, there's more to it than just pasta and peppers: before the water was boiling I'd begun an olive oil/butter saute that included two kinds of garlic (regular minced and sliced Korean pickled) a red onion and (eventually) some sliced rounds of chicken asiago sausage (that I defrosted in the pasta water... a modest amount really more for flavor than protein quotient) and a few thinly sliced small new potatoes. Everything gets pushed around in the pan until nicely caramelized and there's not too much of any one ingredient: everything's in balance, including seasonings.
At the end, a few crumbles of Gorgonzola (from Trader Joe's), a sprinkle of Parmesan and a big pile of minced Basil (also in the December remnants of my garden) were added. As of this writing, I've managed to exercise enough self-control to not have seconds.
Yet.