dinner time!

Oh what a snow day....

here's a picture of my girl waiting patiently for Daddy to cook her grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. You can see how thrilled she is with all us... That's definitely the face of a girl who misses daycare!
But being at home all day (though still working) did give me the opportunity to make something other than the meatloaf I had planned. I still had defrosted a pound of ground turkey, so it had to be somehow related to that. Other than stir fry (which Andrew doesn't really like) and tacos (didn't have the ingredients necessary, other than the ground turkey) I was coming up with nothing. To the trusty internet I went!

Stuffed peppers!

I followed a very simple recipe, but of course I made some changes. It's such an easy recipe, I almost didn't blog about it, because I'm sure everyone has some version of this laying around, and if not it's a simple google search away. But it was really REALLY good and worth mentioning.

ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup uncooked long grain white rice (we had Uncle Ben's Boil in a Bag rice - I honestly don't know how much rice that is, we used one bag)
  
• 8 ounces sliced mushrooms
  
• 3 green bell peppers (only because 1 was huge, we only needed 4 medium ones)
  
• 16 oz tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (generous)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (we don't have any - I used a spoonful of minced garlic)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

Directions
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
2. Cook rice according to packaging
3. Brown turkey, add the mushrooms when it's mostly browned


OPTIONAL STEP! Realize the constant banging into your leg by something small and hard is your daughter repeatedly banging her empty sippy against it. Also realize that the small high pitched noise you've been tuning out is her saying "milk! milk! milk!" over and over again. Demand that she say please, and then, finally, pour the child some milk.


4. Remove and discard the tops, seeds, and membranes of the bell peppers. Arrange peppers in a baking dish with the hollowed sides facing upward. (Slice the bottoms of the peppers if necessary so that they stand up. Like this:

ooohh... pretty peppers. If red or yellow ones are one sale, I highly recommend those for stuffed peppers, but most of the time green will have to do!

5. In a bowl, mix the browned beef, cooked rice, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder (or minced garlic, whatev), onion powder, salt, and pepper.

this is everything except the rice... starting to look yummy! boil, rice, boil!

6. Spoon an equal amount of the mixture into each hollowed pepper. (NOTE - the original recipe calls for 6 peppers, and we definitely had some left over. We froze the remainder for 2 more peppers on some night when we are rushed)

7. Cook for one hour!

Finished product - it was SO GOOD!