Stuffed Peppers

Ok, I know I said I would be posting in a couple of days about some changes hubby and I are making to our diet…that was more than a couple of days ago. I’ve had a busy week, a lot of it dealing with finances….the cost of everything is going WAY up while the paychecks go up a little once a year if you’re lucky. I freaked when opening the utility bills this week, we used less electricity over the previous month yet the bill is $50 higher just for the electricity part alone….everything else went up too when our consumption changed very little. Basically my utilities are at least $150 more than the previous month, plus groceries just seem to keep going up and up every month. I tried to find a way to spend less than $600 a month on groceries, but unless all we eat is Kraft Dinner there’s just no way, groceries just cost too much here, I spend less than most families for a family of 4. So, as always, money is stressing me out man! I need to find the time to focus on how to earn some money while still being here for my family, problem is being here for my family doesn’t give me a lot of time to think about how I’m going to earn money or have the time to do it.

Anyway, because of focusing on finances this week I didn’t really pay much attention to my blog at all. I will still be posting more about our change in diet and why, for now the short version is that we have cut out all carbs….no sugar, no bread, no flour period. So I have also been working on getting set up with different recipes and meal plans than I am used to, which is surprisingly more time consuming than it sounds(especially when you have to play referee in the middle of it lol).

Yesterday I made Stuffed Peppers for dinner, I’ve been meaning to make them for a long time but never got around to it. It was a perfect meal though for our new(again…yes, will get to explaining that soon) low carb lifestyle. I knew it would be as simple as omitting the rice that is usually in a stuffed pepper, but as I was looking around for a recipe I couldn’t find one I totally liked. All the recipes I found were either missing something or had too much of something, or I just didn’t like the recipe overall. So, since I have been wanting to do more of making my own recipes from scratch instead of using existing recipes as a base, I made my own recipe and it turned out better than I had even hoped! I mean, these were seriously delicious!!!

I made mine with green peppers only because I found bags of green peppers on sale for pretty cheap($2.68 for 4 peppers, if you told me years ago I would be paying that one day and calling it “cheap” I wouldn’t have believed you!), my original plan was to use a mix of all colors, but they were quite a bit more expensive. For me I think I would have preferred a yellow or orange pepper, but I also am picky on how I like green peppers, they have to be diced and cooked soft and mixed in. But you can use whatever peppers you want, I would even do it with large jalapenos if I got a deal on some. Oh, and my 11 year old who hates peppers LOVED these, inhaled 1 before I even sat down, downed another seconds later and was begging for more, he was begging me for mine!

This is how I made it and there were plenty for 5 people and one left over, adjust for how many people and whether or not you’re eating something else with them, hubby and I had only these(he had 3, I had 2), the kids and my bro in-law had 2 each and potatoes with theirs.

 

Stuffed Peppers

6 Peppers, any color

1 lb Ground Beef

1 lb Ground Pork Sausage

1 Onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 can diced tomatoes, or equivalent of fresh diced

1 tsp Cumin

1 tsp Oregano

1 tsp Chili Powder

Salt

Pepper

Shredded Cheese

Brown ground beef and pork sausage, dump meat into a strainer straddled over a bowl and let fat drain out. Saute onion, add garlic when onion is almost done and saute for a few minutes, stirring continuous so you don’t burn the garlic(if you don’t cook a lot you may not know that garlic burns very fast, I always add it in as late as possible, burnt garlic is very bitter and will ruin the taste of the dish). Add meat back into pan along with tomatoes and spices. Mix together well and cook on Med-Low while you prepare the peppers, stirring every few minutes.

Wash your peppers and slice them all in half, carefully clean out all the pepper guts and stem, try not to let the pepper half lose too much of it’s structure. Boil the pepper halves in a pot of water for 3 to 5 minutes depending how crunchy you prefer your peppers(I did about 4 minutes and it was perfect for the guys, I would have liked them a little softer).

Cover baking sheets with foil and lay pepper halves out. Fill peppers with meat mixture and top with as much shredded cheese as you would like(I used marble). Bake at 350* for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Please leave a comment, and you can add me to Twitter and/or Facebook too(links on the upper right column). I love connecting with people!

Jolene