Cooking So Good You'll Slap Your Mama...(please don't slap your mom)

On a redemption food quest after my venture from the other day was destroy by the evil Weather Wizard Tom Skilling. It did start to rain but I was on a mission from the food gods and was not going to let it deter me two days in a row. I finally got a favorite unhealthy choice of nutrition: a gyro and fries. Worry not as I made it less unhealthy by getting the junior version of said food. I have to keep myself some what slim now and days.

Junior Gyro and fries from Mr. Beef & Gyro

The gyro and fries did the number and almost gave me the "itis" but I moved on ahead with my plans of grocery shopping as I had to get ingredients as part of a birthday gift for my step-dad. I hit up one of the supermarkets near me- Meijer- and did regular grocery shopping as well as my usual perusing of all the aisles. I believe I might have been in there for a bit of time as I didn't really have a list outside of mandatory ingredients needed for the special selection.  Upon my perusing I stumbled across some new items (at least to me) that caught my fancy and peaked my interest.

Typically my wife is a huge fan of Noosa brand yogurt. So as I went to get her favorite flavor I noticed what I thought was a crazy concept for a flavor "Blackberry Serrano".  What caught my attention was the pepper image with the words "sweet heat" on it. Considering that's my street name I had to buy it.  Just kidding...I was going to buy it regardless cause it was something different. Also I enjoy their play on yogurt with "yoghurt".

Noosa Blackberry Serrano yogurt 

The final verdict: I like it. Overall the initial flavor is blackberry with like a pepper smell. The serrano pepper kind of gives it a slight kick for an after taste but not that spicy at all. I think I would put it on the list of would buy again if I happen to see it again and was in the mood for yogurt.

The other new item I ran across which I've never personally seen before was Enjoya Pepper.

Enjoya Pepper

Apparently per internet research (no not wikipedia) This pepper was first introduced in 2013 by Wilred van den Berg from the Netherlands. Pretty much just a striped bell pepper in my estimation. Will have to see how that turns out.

So what is it that my step-dad enjoys to the most? Funny enough one of his favorite meals/items that I have made is a cranberry Italian sausage stuffing...or depending on where/how you grew up "dressing".  I suppose if it stands on its own outside of a bird it should classify as dressing however you're still going to be stuffing your face with it so I still call it a stuffing. 

Any who after the first time I made it my step dad became the biggest fan of it. So much so that he claimed- and still does- that it was better than any his own mother ever made. Considering I've never sampled his mother's cooking I'm going to have to think that at the very least my cooking ain't too shabby.  He kind of mentioned it a couple days ago and with his birthday here I decided to bust my cooking skills and give the old man one of his favorite meals to celebrate. So after some fine culinary tactics and skills I present to you my household famous stuffing/dressing:

Reef's Italian Cranberry Stuffing/Dressing

I don't think I've come across anyone who didn't like it- then again I haven't tried to serve it to someone who's a vegan and/or was allergic to anything in it so the test pool is fairly small.

My wife enjoys my cooking time as I usually have loud music of some sort blasting. Also I have been know to rock her apron- which is lovely and has her name on it. Overall cooking is a good stress reliever in my world so I highly enjoy it. So much so that this past Thanksgiving I actually cooked twice- double of everything. I might have issues. So if you're in the area for a major holiday and/or a special occasion, I can be convinced to cook something fairly easily.

#squadgoals,
Reef