The Bathroom is finally done – yeah! What a nice feeling to walk into a warm bathroom with heated floors! And I think Mike and I did a pretty good job in “designing” it a little bit more modern. I even got my own “sit down make up place”. See for yourself!

Now that the bathroom remodel is done we don’t have to do Home Depot runs anymore and could take full advantage of the beautiful weekend, packed up the dogs and explored the new “wildlife area” at the Snoqualmie river in Carnation. The weather last week was just amazing, sun all weekend long and lower 60’s every day, what a treat for the Northwest, so opposite to the Northeast which has to dig themselves out of several feet of snow.

After the walk we treated ourselves to some refreshing beverages and food in Carnation. On Saturday we did a quick trip to Cabalas to get Mike outfitted for his upcoming fishing trip to Omak and while he was looking at fishing lures and making happy faces and googely eyes like me when I see the latest and greatest anti aging wrinkle cream, I was trying on some Camo Gear and “playing” with the fake deer display. Maybe a Camouflage outfit will help with distracting from the wrinkles?

Ok now on to another tasty German Recipe – courtesy of my fabulous mum! The dish originated in the Balkan’s but its cooked quite a bit in Germany. You don’t have to fill the peppers with meat, you could just mix together some rice and veggies (zucchini or mushrooms) and fill the peppers with that to make it a vegetarian dish.

Gefuellte Paprikaschoten

Ingredients:

• 4 peppers (any color)
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 Onion, cut into very very fine pieces
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs or 1 old dinner roll (soaked in water for 15 min. – squeeze out all the water before you mix it into the meat)
• Salt, Pepper, Cayenne Pepper, Paprika, Garlic Salt
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic cut into little slices
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
• 1/2 – 1 cup beef broth
• 1 pinch of sugar
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 dash of oregano and marjoram
• 2 cups of rice

Directions:

1. Mix the ground pork and ground beef together, add the bread crumbs (or dinner roll), onion and egg, season with Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika and garlic salt.
2. Wash the peppers, top off the lid off 3 of the peppers and clean out the inside and cut one pepper into small pieces.
3. Fill the 3 peppers generously with the beef/pork mixture.
4. Heat some oil in a medium size pot and brown the left over beef/pork mixture (should be approx. 1 cup of mixture) – 3-4 minutes, squeeze in the garlic cloves, then add the peppers and fry them up from all sides but make sure not to burn them, that will make them taste bitter. Add the tomatoes, beef broth, tomato paste, chopped up pepper, bay leaf and season with salt, pepper, paprika and a pinch of sugar. Cover with a lit and let simmer on low for 45-60 minutes
5. Cook the rice according to the instructions (10-12 minutes for parboiled rice, 25-30 minutes for the rice cooker)
6. 5 minutes prior to the peppers being done add a little bit of oregano and marjoram and server the peppers over rice.

Guten Appetit!