Recipe: Stuffed Green Bell Peppers

When I cook I tend to have a set of recipes that I use as family staples. (Especially when I'm coming home from work and I'm exhausted, but we still need to eat. And no, we can't have fast food again. We need to have real food.) For me, this recipe doesn't take a lot of thought, and most of the time I'm trying to use up ingredients that need to be used up or else they have to be tossed out into the trash. 

In fact the first time I made this recipe it was because we had several green bells in our fridge and I didn't realize I'd bought even more bell peppers at the store just a few days before. Then we had some leftover Mexican rice that I'd made that always ends up getting tossed out because there just isn't enough for two people in another meal. 

A quick look at Pinterest on the proper temperatures to cook stuffed bell peppers and I ended up pulling this together. The recipe has changed a bit over time, but I have finally found one that I think works out for our family. As long as I have enough bell peppers in the fridge I can cook this up and have dinner on the table in 30-40 minutes. 

Recipe

1 lb Ground Turkey

1 cup Frozen Sweet Yellow Corn

1 cup Cooked Rice (approximately)

4 Medium Bell Pepers

1-2 TBSP Minced Garlic

1/4 cup diced White Onion

1 bag of Shredded Mild Chedder Cheese

Step One: Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Line 1 cookie sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.

Step Two: Wash and cut off the tops of your four bell peppers. Scrape out the seeds and insides of each bell pepper and toss the seeds and stem. Dice the tops of your bell peppers. You are going to sauté the diced bell pepper later.

Step Three: Once your oven is preheated you are going to place all four empty bell peppers on the cookie sheet into the preheated oven. I usually do this for about 15 minutes. Also I'm lazy. I don't want to boil the bell peppers or any of that. So I just bake them while I get the filling cooked. I still set the timer just incase something happens. I don't want to cook the peppers too long.

Step Four: Toss your diced bell pepper, onion, and garlic into a hot a skillet with some olive oil. Once they have cooked for about 5 minutes throw in the ground turkey and brown. I usually add about 1-2 TBSP of Knorr Boullion into the ground turkey and cook. However you can season the ground turkey however you'd like. I'm sure not everyone is a huge fan of Knorr Boullion. 

Step Five: Once your ground turkey is browned add in your frozen corn and cook until the corn is no longer frozen. The corn can cook pretty well with just the juices of the ground turkey. Once the corn is cooked add the rice. When it comes to my rice I am usually trying to use up the last of some left over Mexican rice I've made earlier in the week. You can use whatever kind of rice you prefer. 

Step Six: Lower the heat on your skillet and add in about 1/2 cup of cheese and mix until the cheese is throughly melted throughout the turkey.

Step Seven: Pull your bell peppers from the oven and set somewhere the hot cookie won't fall or burn you. Stuff each bell pepper with the turkey mix. Usually I have a little of the mix piled on top of the bell peppers. Sprinkle a little bit of cheddar cheese on each bell pepper and slide it into the oven again. 

Step Eight: Cook the bell peppers for 20 minutes and serve. 

Easy Banana Bread

This banana bread is delicious, and I can't tell you how often we buy bananas and have at least three of them end up turning brown. Luckily, I friend of mine gave me an easy recipe to make banana bread. I really like this recipe because I'm definitely a person that needs things to be easy when it comes to the kitchen. I made a couple small changes to the original recipe just to try something different. I felt like the original recipe just was a little too sweet for me, and needed something. After looking at other recipes online this is what I came up with. If you'd like you can also add some chopped nuts, but I personally prefer my banana bread without.

Easy Banana Bread

3 mashed ripe bananas
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar OR 1/2 cup sweetener (I use Splenda.)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine butter, eggs, and vanilla. Add mashed bananas. In seperate bowl combine flour, sugar, and baking powder. Add banana mixture. Pour into greased and floured loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Recipe: Jannsen's Favorite Lasanga

While on Spring Break visiting a friend and her family in Oklahoma I read a recipe in Jannsen's blog, Everyday Reading. (Yes, I know I should be working on that Pinterest challenge. Hopefully I'll be playing catch up with that soon.) Since I wasn't working I thought to myself, "Hey! I could actually try out this recipe!" All too often do I see a recipe that I think would be good, but I don't try it because it's not something that can be made in 30 minutes.

This lasagna coupled with a salad and garlic bread fed six adults and one child with leftovers. I only made a couple of changes to the recipe.

1) I used ground turkey instead of hamburger. 

2) I didn't use any garlic salt per my friend's suggestion. 

3) I put some of the mozzarella cheese on top. Which I later learned left some water on the top of the sauce. It was okay though after a couple of napkins I sopped up that water and it still tasted pretty good.

I also learned that you can use seemingly strange ingredients, like cottage cheese and tomato soup, in a lasagna recipe and it tasted pretty good! In fact this lasagna was a real crowd pleaser all around. I can see why this lasagna was Jannsen's favorite. When I told the husband that I had made this lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta his first  reaction was, "Uggh." I told him, "I know! But it was really good!" 

I have to warn you that this was not a throw together recipe. It took time to make the sauce, cook the noodles, put it together, and bake it. But, if you want to feed a crowd this is a pretty great recipe to go with. Everyone who tried it enjoyed it. 

You can find the recipe at Everyday Reading titled "Dinner is Served: My Favorite Lasagna." 

Recipe: (Hopefully) Healthier Chile Rellenos

Image from wikipedia.

If you don't know what that is chile rellenos are ancho chiles or anaheim chiles stuffed with hamburger meat or cheese, dipped in batter and fried. While I love chile rellenos you can just imagine how many calories a hamburger filled, batter-dipped and fried chile relleno is. I love Chile Rellenos. Before last week I hadn't had one in years. If you make them traditionally chile rellenos take a long time to make because they are a lot of work. I decided the best way to make a filling healthy chile relleno was to make some modifications to a regular chile relleno recipe.

For this recipe I used:

4 ancho chiles or anaheim chiles

1/2 pound of ground turkey

2 diced tomatoes

1/4 white onion

1/2 cup diced white mushrooms

1 clove garlic

 mozzarella cheese

1 tbspn olive oil

toothpicks

Roasting the Chiles

1. Preheat your oven to 450.

2. Lay your washed and dried ancho chiles on aluminum foil in a cookie sheet.

3. Once your oven is preheated put your chiles in and set your oven timer to 10 minutes.

4. Every 10 minutes you are going to turn your chiles in order to evenly blacken the chiles.

5. Cook the chiles for 20-30 minutes. 

6. Once the chiles finish blackening turn the oven down to 350.

Making the Stuffing

1. Heat your nonstick pan to medium heat. 

2. Add the olive oil.

3. Once oil is heated cook the onion until it starts to turn transparent.

4. Add 1/2 pound turkey. At this point usually add about a tablespoon of chicken bouillon. Don't add a lot. It can get really salty really fast.

5. Add mushrooms.

6. Brown ground turkey.

7. Once turkey is cooked remove it from heat. 

Putting It Together

1. Once your chiles are blackened put them into a plastic bag to steam. Doing this will help your chiles peel easier.

2. Let your turkey stuffing cool so you can stuff the chiles.

3. Once your chiles have had time to cool remove them from the plastic bad and start peeling. Depending on the chiles you may want to wear gloves so you don't burn your hands. Mine didn't burn at all from peeling.

4. Lay your chiles on the cookie sheet again and cut a slit in the middle. 

5. Use a spoon to scrape out the seeds.

6. Stuff the cooked turkey into the chile. Top it off with the cheese.

7. Close the chiles with toothpicks. 

Finish the chiles by sticking them back into the oven and let the cheese melt for 5-10 minutes.

Finally, top off the finished chiles with fresh tomatoes, and serve with rice. 

Photo by me.

Earl Grey Cupcakes

The other day I found a blog called Bake Love Not War, and found the perfect cupcake recipe for me. Earl Grey Cupcakes. I am a huge tea fan. I love tea, and finding a recipe with tea in it? Oh, man. Heaven. I didn't take any really fancy photos of my cupcakes, but an iPhone photo will just have to do. Seeing as my fancy-pants camera seems just a little too far away from me when all I want to do is eat cupcakes and drink tea.

Unfortunately I am an American so I had to find an online measurement converter to know how many teaspoons and not grams I needed of butter and what the F and not C I needed to preheat my oven to. Over all these cupcakes were super easy to make, and very light in taste. Not too sweet, but tastes just enough like tea.

I loved these cupcakes and highly recommend you try them out too.

Recipe over here.