peppery beef and basil stir fry

i love weddings. a lot of times, i find myself looking at wedding blogs and spending hours clicking away at every link i can find on each site. there's just something about weddings that gives me a better perspective on life - that it's not all about murders and wars. a couple of years ago, i was enlisted by my cousin to help out with her wedding. i was excited. she sent me what her invitation looked like and gave me the task of designing place cards, menu and mostly everything that needs to be printed. this gave me something to do for the next couple of months.after a month or so, a multitude of emails, a few gigabytes of attachments and numerous phone calls, the date of the wedding was closing in. shawn and i finally found time to go down to union city to give my cousin, her sisters and her friends some extra manpower to speed up the process of finishing up everything they need for the wedding. we spent most of the time catching up before getting some work done. right before we started, hunger presented itself. so my cousin asked her then-fiance-now-husband to cook diner for everyone.
when the rice cooker clicked back to warm, i knew it was time to go to the kitchen and check out what's brewin' in the kitchen. i smelled basil and i was intrigued. you know i love basil and anything recipe that has it on its ingredient list. i looked into the steaming pot, lifted the cover and scooped a big spoonful of the peppery ground meat into my plate. i immediately had a spoonful, and the moment it touched my tongue, a grin was plated across my face. it was sweet from the onions and bell peppers, meaty and there was a mild burn from the generous amount of pepper added into the dish.
that dish was simple but quite remarkable. the combination of all the flavors were amazing. it was like my cousin and now husband, a wonderful combination. i love how you can combine simple ingredients and come up with a very satisfying meal. i guess that's one of the other things i love about weddings. no matter how complicated the preparations and how extravagant the set up is, none of the matters if the bride and groom are not there. you can take away the white dress, expensive tux and grand location and you'll still have the same wonderful result, two people who vow to spend the rest of their lives with each other - just like this dish.

peppery beef and basil stir fry

ingredients:
1 lb ground beef or turkey
2 large onions, sliced, divided
3 stalks celery, sliced
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 tbsp ground black pepper
10-15 leaves basil, chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp oil
salt
green onions (optional)
instructions:
1. heat up your wok or frying pan over medium high heat. once hot, add oil.
2. saute half of the sliced onions, celery and garlic. when the onion are soft, add ground beef/turkey.
3. when the meat is brown and there's no more pink, add ground black peppers, the other half of the onions, red and green bell peppers and cook for about 7 minutes until the bell peppers are slightly soft.
4. once the bell peppers are soft, take the pan out of the heat, then add lemon juice and basil. it'll wilt and distribute it's flavor into the dish from the residual heat. serve with rice and top with chopped green onions. enjoy!

*note: always remember to add a bit of salt every time you add an ingredient into your pan. it wouldn't make it too salty. it'll season each ingredient you add and bring out its flavor. you can't just add all salt in the end. if you do, you'll learn the difference between having a well-seasoned dish and a salty one the hard way. this just doesn;t apply to this dish, it goes all across the board. have fun!!!