Leilaland

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Eats- Cheesy Stuffed Red Peppers

Since I've known Jeff I have evolved from knowing how to prepare two meals, to actually cooking most nights of the week. He thinks that my cooking is awesome. Well, he didn't actually say that, but he did say tonight that I made the best Cheesy Stuffed Red Peppers ever!

The two of us have been searching for the perfect mixture to stuff inside red peppers for quite some time now. I finally found perfection a few months back and tonight I was able to make them even better than he remembered.

Jeff has admitted that I "won" this dish. What does that mean exactly? Well, it seems that I am the one who gets to make it. Wow. Winning feels great.

This recipe made enough mixture to stuff six large peppers. Tonight I baked only two servings (Leila ate some of mine) then froze the rest into two serving portions. A simple salad on the side was all we needed because I stuffed these peppers to the max. I couldn't even finish my entire pepper! Jeff scooped my leftover mixture onto some chips. I bet it would even be good wrapped up in a tortilla!

Cheesy Stuffed Peppers

You can see the original recipe with pictures here on Allrecipes.com. I basically followed it exactly, except I add more rice and sometimes I use extra lean ground pork or lean ground beef, depending what is on sale.

Ingredients: Serves 6. I bake 2 servings then freeze the rest into 2 serving portions.

1 lb (93/7) Lean Ground turkey
½ package taco seasoning mix
3/4 cup water
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 cup of cooked long grain brown rice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 (14 oz) can diced tomatoes (reserve some to top pepper before baking)
large red bell peppers (one per person)
Cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2. Begin preparing long grain rice (cooks 40 min)

3. Prepare pepper by cutting off the top and insides. Place on foil lined baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

4. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.

5. Place the ground turkey into a skillet over medium heat, and brown the meat, breaking it apart into crumbles as it cooks. Drain excess fat.

6. Stir in the taco seasoning, water, chili powder, cooked rice, salt, garlic salt, black pepper, and 1 can of diced tomatoes; mix until thoroughly combined. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 20 minutes.

7. Place the cooked peppers into the prepared baking dish, place a slice of cheese at the bottom of the pepper, then fill with the meat and rice mixture. Spoon the remaining can of diced tomatoes over the peppers. Top with a slice of cheese. Cover the dish with aluminum foil.

8. Bake in the preheated oven until the peppers are tender and the filling is hot about 25 minutes.

(Oh how I would love to have a mouth watering picture of our delicious meal right here. Not today. Not ever. Taking photos of food is way too hard.)

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

15 months

Next week Leila will be 15 months old. She's a full-fledged toddler.

Leila weighs about 21 lbs (23rd percentile) and about 2 1/2 feet tall (64th percentile). She's independent, smart, funny, and sweet.

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

I love that she hugs on demand and can actually sit through an entire book (if she chooses).

Her favorite things are exploring, collecting "treasures", and chatting up strangers, especially children!

Her obsession with garbage trucks is adorable.

She has the cheesiest fake smile when you ask her to smile for the camera. And just today I saw her fake pout at me! I really have to watch my facial expressions around her. She imitates EVERYTHING!

She has a few words, but shows us that she understands a lot more. It's truly amazing to me that she can follow a simple direction (again, if she chooses...remember how I said she was independent?!)