What's For Dinner?

Since I can remember from the time I was just a little girl the first question I asked my Mother was "What's for dinner?" My Mom is a great cook and I was brought up having delicious and balanced meals every night for dinner. I feel that I am the cook I am today because of the way she cooked for us.  My Mother did not cook the same things each week and there was no set schedule.....Monday is meatloaf, Tuesday is pasta, Wednesday is hamburgers and so on, you get the idea! She enjoyed cooking and was always willing to experiment and try different recipes and dishes. In raising my own children I wanted to cook the same way. I always prepared a balanced meal and made certain I introduced a new food every week especially in their most youngest years.
It is a family joke that when I was very,very young and our family would go out to dinner I would be the one always ordering a hot dog when my other siblings were trying new and exciting foods. I loved hot dogs then and now I might eat one twice a year! Looking back I was missing so many wonderful food opportunities. Naturally as we grow we develop different and more mature tastes and I soon discovered that if I don't at least try it once I will never know. I have since tried weird and wonderful dishes and if you told me 30 years ago that I would eat a snail I would have told you how crazy that thought was...alas today I love escargot!!
In all my cooking years I have yet attempted to make stuffed peppers.  It's not that I don't like them it was just never something I thought to make. In the grocery store yesterday in the produce section I saw some beautiful, huge green peppers and that's when the light bulb went off in my head.... I will make stuffed peppers for dinner!! Not knowing really how they were made, I just logically thought of the ingredients I would need. It didn't seem that complicated and thought I would basically wing it.  It seemed also that I had most of the ingredients home.
I started with 2 lbs of lean ground beef
Brown rice
2 large yellow onions, chopped
Worchestire sauce
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder
2 large jars of medium salsa
Mozzarella cheese
10 green peppers (yes I cook for a family of 7 even though many have flown the nest, but it is a habit of many years feeding many mouths...besides it makes for great leftovers!)
I browned the beef and onion, drained the fat, added my rice and seasonings to taste, added the salsa to desired consistency and mozzarella cheese.
After cutting the tops off of the peppers and scraping out seeds and rinsing I then filled with my mixture. I put them in a deep baking pan and poured tomato sauce over the tops of the mixture and peppers.  I placed them in a preheated 350 degree oven and baked them for about an hour basting them with the tomato sauce as they cooked.
The result was phenomenal!! It was a hit....yay!! The salsa gave it a kick and the peppers were perfectly cooked...neither mushy or too crisp....ahhh just right!
I am so happy that my first attempt without a recipe was such a success.  After so many years of cooking I suppose that the thought of ingredients and dishes and how you prepare them come a bit naturally......but it is nice to have a finished product that is delicious and edible!!