Yum!

Anyone who knows me knows I am not a cook! That's why I married a chef…who, by the way, is an amazing cook. But I do have one dish that is my signature holiday hors-d'oeuvre. It's stuffed jalapenos peppers. What? You say you don't like spicy food? You don't know what you're missing. Besides, the hottest part of the pepper are the seeds and I scrape those out. All you need is a 26oz. can of whole jalapeno peppers, 12 oz. of cream cheese (softened), a pound of pork sausage (Jimmy Dean). (If you want to go meatless, then substitute diced shrimp for the sausage. I avoid those tiny salad shrimps because they have no flavor and get the jumbo shrimp and chop them up). Cook the meat or shrimp. Be sure to degrease the sausage as best as you can. I dab it with paper towels. Then add the meat or shrimp to the cream cheese. The hard part is slicing the peppers and de-seeding them. (I use a serrrated kitchen thingie that the chef has that works good. It's some kind of parer or corer that he says also works good for sectioning grapefruits.) Dab the peppers (and shrimp) with paper towels too because you don't want any of the ingredients to be soggy (I made that mistake only once!). Then, generously fill the empty peppers with the cream cheese mixture. Last, a sprinkle of some kind of red spice. I use store bought Emeril's Essence. Bam! Refridgerate a few hours before serving and then enjoy!