Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Stuffed peppers

For my family, the change of seasons always brings with it new challenges. Kids act crazy, schedules change, and it seems impossible to find time for blogging and other quiet tasks.

And, then, inexplicably, things seem to fall into place (or perhaps it is the eye of the storm!). Still, it's hard to make time for the things that I like in the day in and day out. Ah, life.

And speaking of life. Sometimes, my international market has random great deals. Like bell peppers, 6 for $1.19. I got 18, planning to freeze them, and we ate them all, in a mere 2 weeks time. Guess I had missed peppers since last summer! This was my stove top variation on stuffed peppers. It's hot already, so I avoid the oven as much as possible.

This recipe starts with ground beef and onions, of course. Even if I don't know what to cook, that's how I start. It always turns into something.


A can of diced tomatoes. I'm out of home-canned tomatoes, so Hunt's will have to do until summer. This is the lazy version, with onions, celery, and bell pepper added. Makes life easier.










Leftover rice. I had made this extra on purpose, thinking we'd have fried rice, but stuffed peppers sounded better.




I steamed the peppers for a few minutes until they were tender. Maybe 5 minutes? Not long.




I had no tomato sauce in the house, so I whisked together some tomato paste and water to make the sauce for the peppers.




Stuffed the peppers with the ground beef/rice/tomato mixture, then placed them in the skillet with the tomato paste mixture. I topped the peppers with a little of the gravy/sauce. And, yes, one of the peppers is pepper-less. My husband isn't a huge fan of bell peppers, so he ate one stuffed pepper and one pepper-less pile of stuffing. Whatever works.



I just covered these and simmered for about 15 minutes, until everything was heating through.

They turned out great! I was so pleased to find an oven favorite that translates to the stove-top. Yay for a cooler kitchen!

I'm linked to Tasty Tuesday over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam today.

1 comment:

Dawn said...

Looks delicious! I do these in the crockpot and they work well (and I put the ground beef mixture in raw.) Scott also isn't a bit fan of peppers, so he likes to eat the 'guts' out of his. :)