Taco & Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

So I saw an episode of some show on the Food Network where they did stuffed peppers and I realized that that was something I had never eaten nor made. I am trying to be a little more adventurous with my food (this isn't very out there but I'm not a big meat eater and all the recipes I'd seen sounded strange). But I found a few recipes for stuffed peppers I liked and wondered if I could kind of combine them and do a healthy(ish) taco flavored stuffed pepper. Most of the stuffed pepper recipes I found (especially Mexican ones) called for rice. I decided to do quinoa instead for it's health benefits (and the only rice I had was brown rice which called for an hour cooking time!) The quinoa doesn't add a lot of flavor - it's a very mild flavor in the first place.

Taco & Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Bell Peppers (I used yellow - red or orange would be great as well)

Ground Beef (we used ground sirloin)

Onion, diced (1/2 for beef, 1/2 for quinoa)

Taco seasoning packet

Water

Tomato sauce (one of those mini cans of Hunt's - not a full size can. 1/2 for the beef, 1/2 for the quinoa)

1 cup (rinsed) quinoa

1 1/4 cups chicken stock

1 can corn (drained)

3 jalapeños, diced (depending on how much heat you like - the recipe I found said 3-4, but 3 was still kind of hot)

Salt

Cilantro (roughly chopped)

Lime juice

Salsa

Sour cream

Shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Put a large pot of water on high heat and bring to a boil. Using a knife, (carefully!) cut a circle around the top of the pepper - which allows you to just grab the stem and pull out most of the core and seeds. Then using a spoon, scoop out the ribs (the white parts) and remaining seeds. Put the peppers into the boiling water and boil for 3-4 minutes. I didn't use a large enough pot and so only half of the pepper was in the water at a time. I had to rotate the peppers every so often. It wasn't the end of the world, but if you use a larger pot you can avoid spending the time to do that. :P

Peppers after they'd been de-seeded and boiled.

Follow the directions on the taco seasoning packet for the ground beef. (Brown, drain, add water and taco seasoning and simmer). After draining the beef I added 1/2 of the diced onion, let those cook a minute or two, and then added the water. I then added 1/2 the can of tomato sauce.

The meat with the onion, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning. 

Heat 2 tsp olive oil (I used EVOO) in saucepan on med-high. Add the diced jalapeños, sauté 1 minute. Stir in the uncooked, rinsed quinoa, then add the chicken stock, the remaining 1/2 can of tomato sauce, corn, and salt. BTB, RTS. (Bring to Boil, then Reduce to Simmer). Simmer 20 minutes, covered. Add cilantro and lime juice to taste. 

Quinoa with chicken stock, corn, jalapeño, and tomato sauce.

Make sure that both the beef mixture and the quinoa mixture have thickened somewhat - you don't want a bunch of liquid in your peppers. It doesn't need to be super thick, but you definitely want the quinoa thicker than pictured (that was taken early on in the cooking time). Once both have thickened some, in a bowl, mix half the beef and half the quinoa together (this would make about 2 peppers. For 4 or 5, just mix all of the beef and quinoa together). Stuff the peppers and place on a baking sheet (I lined it with tin foil cause I hate clean up but it didn't create much of a mess, so that's not really necessary). I added shredded cheese, but I think next time I'll add the cheese when there's only about 2-4 minutes of cooking time left because it turned kind of into a crispy topping instead of a gooey melted cheesy topping.

Bake 30 minutes. You could probably do less since everything is already cooked - I think I cut the time in half cause we were starving and they turned out great!

About to go into the oven! You can see under the left pepper a little tin foil base because it wouldn't stand upright. 

Serve with salsa and/or sour cream. Enjoy!

I need to work on my plating obviously. :P

I ate the bottom of the pepper - even that little stem piece that's sometimes there - without even realizing it because it was so good!! About halfway through the pepper, I mixed in some more shredded cheese cause I'd eaten all of the cheesy topping already and that was really good too! Not sure if adding the cheese to the filling ahead of time would be just as good if not better! But I may try that next time.

Not the most appetizing food or photo, but I swear it was amazing!

We had leftover meat and quinoa which I saved and used a couple days later in an enchilada/taquito/flauta type thing. I plan to re-do that dish with a variation on this filling because it was so good! (I just threw it together for my husband for lunch one day and he actually requested that I make it again for him).

This meal was one of the slightly more complicated ones we've done, but so worth it! Not one we'll do frequently - maybe a once a month kind of thing, but it would be so easy to change and alter and add beans or other diced peppers or do rice or couscous instead of quinoa or just do a completely vegetarian stuffed pepper and take out the beef (and chicken stock). So there may be some more variation recipes to come! :)

Apologies for the photo quality - I used my old crappy phone instead of my nice camera (Canon Rebel T3) for some odd reason.

Enjoy!! And thanks for reading!
Again, I'm always open to tips, suggestions, and your comments on what you thought of the dish if you tried it! :)

Buttery Roasted Potatoes with Mustard Vinaigrette

So this is my first post on my new food blog! Ahh! I've been wanting to start one for a while, but felt intimidated because I don't consider myself to be a chef or even a great cook and I'm kind of a picky eater so I don't make anything that adventurous or fancy and don't try a huge variety of stuff when I go out to eat either. I thought teaming up with my husband on this would be a good idea because he'll eat anything but doesn't cook very much (I plan and cook almost all of our meals - though he does help). 

Well we used to never cook. We would do frozen pizzas and boxed mac n' cheese and those dried rice or noodle packages (just add water!). Yuck! lol. Then I started creating a weekly menu (now I plan two weeks in advance) and looked through a bunch of recipes on foodnetwork.com and in magazines and on pinterest to create a selection of meals. I really don't like recipes/meals that have a lot of ingredients - or recipes that use an ingredient that you will NEVER use again. Like coriander or turmeric - I think I've used each of those once. :P 

Unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of most of the dishes I've made so I guess I'll just have to make them all again in order to write a post about them! 

Well, my husband recently went away for work and right after he left, I remembered that I had a bag of fingerling potatoes that I needed to use. I LOVE potatoes. Pretty much any and every way you can make them, I will eat them. Unless there is mushrooms, seafood, or spinach or something involved. :P

I had a recipe for salt baked potatoes which essentially is just laying down a TON of salt on a dish, then putting the potatoes on top and covering them with MORE salt. You brush off all the salt after you bake them in the oven, but that just sounded like a lot of sodium to me. I'm not crazy concerned with counting calories and stuff, but I do try to eat plenty of fruits and veggies and cut out junk food and fast food and stuff like that. "Everything in moderation," my mom always said. 

So I decided to kind of come up with my own dish, which I'm starting to do a lot more as I get more comfortable with cooking. I hardly ever measure unless I'm following a complicated recipe or baking - but I'll try and estimate for you! This probably isn't the most healthy dish ever... but boy was it good! I ate it by itself as the main dish (I told you I love taters!) but it would be great as a side dish as well. 

Butter Roasted Fingerlings with Mustard Vinaigrette

Fingerling Potatoes

Kosher Salt (eyeball it)

2 Tbs Butter (melted)

Rosemary (small palmful)

2 Tbs whole grain mustard (I used a whole grain garlic mustard)

1 Tbs red wine vinegar (White wine vinegar or probably any kind of vinegar would also be great)

1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce

Rosemary (to taste)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I'm sure regular olive oil would work too, but this was all I had)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

I took a baking dish (I used a glass pie dish cause I didn't have a small enough baking dish) and sprinkled some kosher salt on it. (till it was evenly spread over the bottom). I was trying to follow the salt baked potato recipe I found, but I chickened out cause I was afraid it'd be dry and super salty, so I decided to make it more buttery and moist.

I rinsed and then cut the fingerlings into bite-sized pieces and added them to the dish. I poured 2Tbs melted butter onto the potatoes and sprinkled rosemary on them. (I like to take the rosemary and crush it in my hand a little more to help release more of the flavor/aroma). Mix/toss so that all potatoes are evenly coated. I then baked them (roasted them? I am still learning some of the technical terms and definitions) for about 30 minutes. Check to make sure that they are fork tender. 

Golden, buttery and just out of the oven

While they were cooking, I began working on a little sauce for them. I mixed about 2 spoonfuls/2 Tablespoons of whole grain mustard with about 1 Tbs each of red wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce (I eyeballed both of those - and tasted as I went til I reached the flavor I liked). I don't generally like a lot of mustard (I used to hate it!) so if you really like mustard, you could easily adjust the amounts to get a stronger mustard flavor. I also added EVOO - eyeballed and mixed it all together until it was a thinner consistency (not super runny, but thin enough that it would be able to be drizzled on the potatoes). I also added a little bit of rosemary to help tie the sauce with the potatoes (I watch a lot of Chopped lol). I made this sauce about 3 times cause I didn't make enough for the entire potato dish - so if you want it to cover all the potatoes, I'd probably triple the measurements. One of the times I made the sauce I decided to add mayo to see if it'd make a difference but it just changed the consistency - I didn't really see a difference in taste.

Main ingredients for the sauce.

Yummy sauce!

It was so much better than I expected. Next time I won't use as much salt - I won't cover the bottom with it but I'll just use it as a seasoning. Cause it was a tad bit on the salty side (and I generally like salty food!) But I ate about 2/3 of the potatoes in one sitting and the rest I ate the next day.

Apologies for the messy bowl - I didn't think to take a picture of the completed dish until after my second or third helping. 

If you try this, let me know what you think or any tips/suggestions you have or changes you made. Now I just want to come up with a new variation on it with a different kind of flavor profile because it was so easy and so delicious!

Well, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy!