Stuffed Bell Peppers

Just thought I would share a "recipe" I recently made for dinner. I say recipe loosely because its not something you have to strictly follow to get these to turn out great. 

Stuffed bell peppers

What you'll need:

Bell peppers, any color but green are usually cheaper

Assorted in season veggies, I used asparagus, yellow squash, zucchini and onion

Rice (could substitute with cauliflower rice or omit for low carb)

Cheese 

Butter

Garlic

Salt&pepper

Diced tomatoes-frozen, fresh or canned all work

Chicken, beef or pork (or omit for a veggie version)

Chicken stock or water

Worsetshire sauce

Step 1:

Crash and cut your peppers in half, scoop out the membranes and seeds, be careful not to make a gigantic hole like I did, oops! 

Step 2: steam the peppers until they are slightly tender, about 10 minutes.

Step 3: sauté the butter, minced garlic and onions for about 2 minutes. The onions were in the freezer from last years garden.

Step 4: add your veggies and pre-cooked meat, they are diced in roughly 1/2" pieces. I also added worsetshire sauce and salt and pepper

Step 5: add chicken broth and a handful of rice, cover and allow to simmer until rice is done.. Shorter for minute rice, longer for traditional rice 

Step 6: after about 20 minutes my rice was done and I topped with shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheese and mixed it in well, it was nice and gooey! 

Step 7: fill peppers 

Step 8:  at this point you can go one of 3 routes

1. Pop in a preheated oven at 350 for 10-15 minutes

2. Wrap in foil and freeze for later

3. Put in the fridge for dinner later.

At our house this was a big hit! A very pretty and somewhat healthy meal. Best of all it was cheap and delish!

Cost for 6-1/2 peppers or 3 servings : less than $3!! 

Peppers-$2 for 3

Rice-$.33

Asparagus-$.75

Tomatoes, onions, squash & zucchini all came from the garden (this years or frozen from last year) so FREE

Garlic-.10

Cheese-.50

Chicken stock-free from the freezer

Butter and other assorted spices:.25

Sneak Peek

I haven't had the time to sit down and upload all the pictures from what has been going on, not to mention trying to remember to take pictures when you are in the middle of a project.. so here is a little peak into what has been going on in the Ren household.

The upstairs wall and flooring has been repaired. This hole is the result of a roof in the leak that was ignored by the previous owners, they replaced the roof and siding but didn't fix the damage.  Eric had to go in and remove some of the studs and replace them along with some other fancy crap that I have no idea about.  That was last weekends project, that fake wall there was apparently holding up our house while he was doing that work. Right now it is all fixed except there is still a big hole in my master bedroom wall where he needs to replace the dry wall. 

And since we are on the subject of holes.. check out this one.  Before we were moved in we came over on day 3 to find that the upstairs toiled had a leak and caused this damage.. or so we thought. Turns out this is actually the result of a rotted out "p" trap in the master bathroom. The pipe had a hole the size of a quarter so the water was flowing in one end and out the other into the vanity and through the floor.. hence the hole in my ceiling. Both leaks are fixed but I still have a hole in my ceiling.

This was my project, I am happy to say it is now done. This wall is our living room wall, we removed the wall paper and this is pre-painting. It is now a pretty shade of gray with bright white trim. It looks fantastic! I am very proud of my paint job, so much that I haven't let Eric hang anything on the walls yet because I don't want to put holes in them!

There are lots of other things going on incuding:

Fence has been staked out, now comes the fun part of digging the post holes
painting upstairs

finishing up the downstairs bathroom

lots and lots of unpacking

Garden Update-6/10/13

I am feeling a little bad, the garden plot is getting neglected with all this new home owner stuff going on. Yesterday we were finally able to make a brief pit stop at the garden on the way home from Wal-Mart, I say we because with Charlie in tow it is nearly impossible to get any gardening done since if I set him on the ground he will literally be eating dirt and we have been getting so much rain that he would be a muddy mess (although I am sure he would enjoy it)

Our tomatoes are HUGE, but not a red one in site.. lots of little green guys though. I pulled the remainder of the radishes, I don't think I will grow those anymore, they get big, take up space and I don't even like eating them! They grow so fast that they make me feel like I actually have a green thumb. The onions are about ready to be pulled and the lettuce and spinach's days are numbered.. it is mid-June after all. The peppers are small, not sure why but I just can't grow peppers.. last year I didn't get a single bell pepper, hoping to get some this year!  And that brings us to the green beans, they just aren't doing well.. first we had bugs so I used an organic spray and they still seem to just be hanging in..they have what appear to be blooms but I don't see any beans!  The bed next to ours has tons of beans! What am I doing wrong??





In other happenings Eric built me a raised bed this weekend for me to plant asparagus in, he is going to build another one next weekend for strawberries. I got these plants 75% off at Lowes so I am really hoping they grow!  The beds cost about $15 each and are 6'x2'x17" high.  This was the cheapest way i could figure out to build raised garden beds and I am overall pretty happy with them. Right now they are sitting empty because we need to get dirt hauled in to fill them.

Here is my updated garden harvest, my goal is 200lbs of produce from my gardens in 2013.

What has been harvested
April ?? : 8lb of carrots ( these were a surprise, we planted them in the fall after Charlie was born and never checked on them!! They were huge)
May 4: 8 oz of radishes
May 8: 7oz of radishes & 7oz of lettuce
May 19: 7oz radishes & 1lb lettuce
June 9: 8oz banana peppers
Total: 11lb 5oz
To Go: 188 lbs 11 oz... hope I can make it!

I still need to plant cucumbers and squash and maybe more beans here at the house.. we haven't harvested any heavy produce yet and I am sure the bulk of the weight will come from tomatoes and squash if I can ever get them in the ground.