Friday, January 13, 2012

Stuffed Bell Peppers

When I was out grocery shopping last week there was a great sale on green bell peppers that I couldn't resist. I had not had stuffed bell peppers in so long and when I saw them I knew I had to pick some up.

People ask me for recipes for some of the dishes I make and I always feel bad because I don't have exact recipes. The way I cook I don't always follow recipes and I don't always measure. (In fact I hardly ever measure if I am making something out of the blue) I am a type of cook that kind of wings it as I go along. I know what my family likes therefore I add/omit many things. ( A dash here, a handful there, you get the picture)

I've decided if I want to try and blog some of my dishes that I should at least try and keep a log of the ingredients and their measurements. (note i said try)

Anyways here is an estimation of ingredients and cooking times.

Ingredients: (for this dish was)

6 green bell peppers
approx 1 lb of ground beef
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 box of rice a roni (prepared as instructed on box)
1 can diced tomatoes, drain the juice
1/4 of an onion, diced
6 small to medium mushrooms
1 - 1.5 cups of shredded cheese (your choice)
1/2 cup black beans
small amt of oil
salt- to taste
pepper - to taste
tomato/chicken bouillon - to taste

Meat Mixture (stuffing for bell peppers)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Saute the garlic,mushrooms, and onion in oil until the mushrooms are almost tender.

2. Add the ground beef to the above mixture. Add salt, pepper, and tomato/chicken bouillon to taste. Cook until there is no pink left in the meat.

3. In the meantime start the rice a roni (follow the instructions on the box)

4. Once meat is cook drain the oil and add the diced tomatoes and black beans.

5. Turn heat to medium-low and stir the ingredients in the pan. Basically since everything is cooked this step is to warm the newly added ingredients with the meat.

6. After a couple minutes add the rice mixture to the ground been mixture. Stir everything together well.



Preparing Bell Peppers:

1. Wash the bell peppers.

2. Cut the tops off the bell peppers.

3. Cut and scrape out the membrane and seeds inside. Discard

4. In a baking dish place the 6 bell peppers on their bottoms. Add a small amount of cheese to inside of each bell pepper. (Basically you want to just cover the bottom of the part of the bell pepper in cheese)

5.Stuff the bell peppers with the meat and rice mixture all the way to the top.

6. Top off with cheese

7. Place about 1.5-2 cups of water in the baking dish. ( or just enough water to cover the bottom of the bell peppers so they don't burn and to help them cook)

8. Place in 350 degree oven for about 35-40 mins or until the peppers are tender.
(please note this cooking time is approximate)

Here is a picture of the finished bell peppers:


Here is the picture of what the inside looks like:
(this bell pepper is on my daughter's dish)




This is my first time writing a recipe online to share with others (or have others read). I am no way an expert on doing this.

Recipes are great to follow but always feel free to make dishes your own. If there is something in my dish that you don't like take it out. Want to add something different, go ahead. I'm all about experimenting and making up things with what I have on hand.

I hope you enjoy.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

New Hobby-Cooking

Lately instead of crafting I have been cooking. I have always enjoyed to cook and make new dishes for my family but never had the time. I have had some free time open up and besides taking care of new son I am watching a lot of Food Network and scouring all different types of cook books.

I recently just started trying to cook Asian food. I have always had a little trepidation with trying to cook any type of Asian dishes as I just never thought I could. Recently I was craving pot stickers and I decided to look up some recipes on how to make it. Once I had my ingredients written off to the asian supermarket I went. I was a little terrified at the time commitment that it takes to make potstickers so I had tried to start early. Let's just say it did take awhile but it went a lot faster once I found this great gadget that formed the potsticker wrappers for me. Eventually I will learn to fold them correctly. The potstickers turned out wonderful and we ate them all up within a couple of days.





Half of the potstickers were filled with a mixture of cooked chicken, napa cabbage, bamboo shoots and garlic. I basically just used my food processor to chop it extremely fine. The other half were made with the same ingredients except they had a ground beef/pork mixture.

I personally enjoyed the ground beef/pork mixture.

I am planning on trying my hand at some more Chinese cooking later this week.

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