Monday, April 16, 2007
Its What's For Dinner
Now that Ryan's teaching the fire academy I'm under the gun to have something to eat around here every night of the week. Gone are the days where I stick a burrito in the microwave for myself or secretly make a box of sinfully delicious, utterly non-nutricious, Mac 'n Cheese. Nope, now I'm like a real housewife with a husband who has a real Mon-Fri job. To make things easier on us, I actually sat down on Sunday and planned out the week's meals. It made shopping easier, but also more expensive (i.e. ingredients like fresh basil, Itallian sausage, turkey bacon.... things I wouldn't normally buy).
Up first is our old stand-by stuffed bell peppers. Its one of Ryan's favorites so I wanted to have something for him to look forward to when he got home after his first day of academy. This recipe is SUPER easy and you can make it as healthy as you want. I should preface any recipe I make by saying I feel strongly that when cooking, unlike baking, it is encouraged to play with the ingredient sizes to your liking and convenience. OK, here it is:
Stuffed Green Peppers
2-3 large green peppers
3/4 lb ground beef (I actually use more for my growing boy)
1/3 Cup chopped onion (if you don't already have a Pampered Chef chopper,
you're missing out!)
7 1/2 oz can of diced tomatoes (I use more of this too)
1/2 Cup water
1/3 Cup long grain rice
1 Tb. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. dried basil or dried oregano
1/2-1 Cup of shredded cheese (your choice)
1. In a large skillet cook meat and onion till meat is brown and onion tender. Drain fat. Add undrained tomatoes, water, uncooked rice, Worcestershire, basil/oregano, 1/4 tsp salt (like I ever measure) and 1/4 tsp pepper. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer. Simmer, covered, for 15-18 minutes (I go on the high end so the rice gets cooked). Stir in 1/4 Cup cheese.
2. While all that's going on, boil water in a big pot. Cut the top off the green peppers and clean out the guts. Drown these in boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove and drain on a paper towel.
3. Preheat oven to 375F. Fill peppers with meat mixture and place in a square baking dish along with any remaining meat mixture. Bake for 15 minutes. In the last 2 minutes add the rest of the cheese to the tops of each pepper. Done!
More vacation blogging tomorrow! A girl's gotta save blog post ideas when she's got them. But until then, here's another few pictures from our wine tasting adventure near Santa Barbara.
posted by atpanda at 8:50 PM
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About Me
- Name: atpanda
- Location: Mesa, Arizona, United States
I'm Amanda. I'm an engineer in an industry full of men, a professional wedding and family portrait photographer, a firefighter's wife, a traveler, and a dogMa.
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3 Comments:
Yummy! I ate the best of this 16 years ago! In sudan! They call them "mah'shi"! Litteraly: stuffed!
Fitèna
Mmmmm...you've given me a dinner idea! Thanks~
Those look YUMMY! Have you tried Sparkpeople? www.sparkpeople.com is a site for well, basically help losing weight, being healthy etc., it's free and similar to a Weight Watchers idea. But they have a HUGE recipe archive (well, it's huge in my mind) and it's full of all kinds of recipes. I've found some great ideas on there. Even if you change the recipe some to make it fit with your likes/dislikes etc, it's given me some great "starting points" for new ideas for meals. Also, you can save time and money by eliminating the meat a couple times and opting for a high-protein pasta or something similar (beans, etc) instead.
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