For most of my life, I wasn’t at all fond of any sort of peppers. (Loved spices, though, including those that incorporated peppers. But any actually evident pepper was verboten.) Then I started working with a bunch of restauranteurs who had a chile pepper fixation, and so I learned to enjoy jalepenos and anaheims and poblanos and (sometimes, a little) habaneros. Went through a phase of chile rellenos for breakfast. Learned that while I really liked to have those tiny red Thai chiles in dishes, it’s best not to actually eat them. Got accustomed to having a big bag of dried chiles nuevo mexico in the cabinet for various purposes. Got curious enough to try whatever other types I came across. So yeah, me and the chiles were good.

But I still didn’t like milder peppers, right up until about a month ago. I might buy one to put in a dish that called for it, but I would certainly never consider them a major component of a meal. And eating one by itself? Never ever ever. Ew.

Then my friend C. came over and made a big pot of vegetarian chili that had about eleventy-seven kinds of peppers in it, including green, red, and yellow bells. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I ate it out of politeness. And it was pretty good. And then I ate a ton of mild-ish peppers in Chicago. This week bell peppers went on sale at the grocery store, so I bought a pound of them and just sort of looked at them for a week, thinking I’d make a pepper soup recipe I’d found. But I’d seen so many recipes that called for roasted peppers, and I’d never done that before, and I knew I liked them since I just ate a passel of them on our trip. So I fired up the broiler and roasted them up. Cooled them in a bag, scraped off the skin.

I’ve been eating them off the plate and putting them on naan with a bit of hummus. Mister Husband cooked them into omelets last night. I’m thinking that when they show up at the Farmer’s Market, I’m going to keep roasted pepper salad around.

All of that would have been implausible for me a month ago. So thank you, C., for making that crazy pot of chili.