Stuffed bell peppers

For the first three years of my marriage, I had to listen to my husband drop hints every few months about how much he loved stuffed peppers. I'm so glad it took me three to make those peppers, because if I wasn't such a procrastinator, I'd have never found the recipe that I turned into my own.

While I was pregnant with Lindsey, it was hot. It was very hot. So I kept myself busy inside. One of my favorite things to do during the summer is canning, but that involved a lot of standing. So I settled on buying green peppers by the boatload and sitting on my couch and cutting them, hollowing them out, whatever I needed to do to them, and I froze them. I highly recommend doing this. If you can find a local farm who sells their peppers cheap, go for it. Sometimes you can find a good deal at a farmers market, but I am not the person who finds those deals. Although I can't remember if I got a half or whole bushel of green peppers, I know that I only paid around $6 for it, and either way you go, that's a great deal. Plus, they froze well and were super handy.

Anyway, it was the winter of 2011 that I decided to shut my hubby up and make him some peppers. I had several in my freezer. It was the perfect time. I used a recipe from a church cookbook as a guide to making them (shocker: I didn't have all the ingredients). I had never made them before, and I couldn't remember eating one ever, so I really had no idea what I was doing. I have used my own recipe since then. These are seriously delicious.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Stuffed bell peppers

Ingredients:

4 green bell peppers
1 pound ground beef
1 large onion, diced
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 can tomato sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 package (5.6 oz) chicken flavored rice (I have used many brands, including store brands)
Cheese- cheddar or Mexican blend

Look at all that cheese!

Cut peppers in half, removed stem and seeds. Boil in a pot of salted water for approximately two minutes. Remove from water, pat dry and place in a 9x13 pan.

Prepare the rice. I use the microwave directions.

Meanwhile, brown meat and onion, drain. I wipe out the pan thoroughly.. grease. Ew. Place back in pan, add salt and pepper, 1/2 can tomato sauce, ketchup and rice. Mix well and scoop mixture into pepper halves. Bake on 350° for 30 minutes.

Drizzle the remaining tomato sauce over the peppers and sprinkle with cheese. I use A LOT of cheese, but you can do what you want. :)  Bake for an additional 5 minutes.

**I have occasionally added our favorite habanero sauce to the meat mixture just to spice it up a bit. Any pepper sauce would work, I should think.

__________________________________________________________________________________

I don't have a clue what to serve with this. I eat it by itself. My husband thinks it goes well with mashed potatoes, but he thinks everything goes well with mashed potatoes.

I murdered a cake.

Really. I did.

I have always loved to bake. I remember learning to cook in elementary school. I love to tell the story about the time I learned to make rice pudding. My Mom said that my Dad loved it, and I think I made at least three batches of it in one night. In the final batch, I misread the amount of salt to go in. It should have been 1/4 teaspoon. Well, I put in 1/4 cup. And that's why we're still talking about it almost 20 years later.

Moving on a few years... my parents once left me alone for a whole Saturday. I baked every recipe on the back of the Bisquick box. At least it all turned out to be quite tasty. How can you ruin a Bisquick recipe? *knocking on wood* Then there was the time I made cilantro lime chicken. At the time I made the recipe, I had never had cilantro before so I had no idea what I was doing. HELLO! It was awful. I would guess that in the time since then- maybe 11 or 12 years- I have yet to ingest a combined amount of cilantro as was on that one chicken breast I ate.

A few years ago, I bought an easy-to-make-and-decorate cake recipe book. I whipped up a spice cake and began to shape it into a pumpkin. I was going to frost it orange. You'd have to see it. It was going to be awesome. It was that evening that I learned that, while I can bake very tasty treats, I cannot decorate them. I can't remember the exact circumstances as to why I needed to relocate this cake, or why I needed help, but I had asked my Mom to help me move this cake. She picked it up, on either side with her hands and moved this cake. I'm not saying she lifted the cake by a plate... I'm saying she picked up the CAKE. And then declared that she couldn't have made it look any worse than it already did. Thanks, Mom.

Since then I have come to terms with my terrible decorating skills. I mean, who cares what it looks like if it is totally delicious? I don't. Actually, I take that back. If I don't know you, then it matters a lot. I do judge others by the appearance of their food. Potlucks creep me out. Moving on...

Tonight I decided to try a super yummy looking cake recipe from my Taste of Home Simple & Delicious magazine, "Quicker Blue-Ribbon Peanut Butter Torte."

Peanut butter. Chocolate. Butterfinger topping. I mean, this sounded like heaven. I'm sure you can tell by the tone of this blog that I have a horror story to tell you. I think where I went wrong was not enough heavy whipping cream. I used what I had, put whole milk in the rest, let chill, blah, blah, blah. It didn't work. It was too soupy, but I tried to assemble it anyway. First, let me say, that goop was delicious. Now let me say, I had to turn this cake into a trifle. I just picked up the cake- kind of like my Mom did the pumpkin cake- and dropped it into a bowl. Not my trifle bowl because it's holding my onions and at this point, I am way too frustrated to wash it. My husband walked in and I innocently told him I ruined the cake and he interrupted me with "you always have to make a trifle." I'm not going to complain. The man knows what a trifle is and it doesn't matter that he knows from years of my cake-making failures. I ate some of it and regardless of what it looks like, it is so good. I didn't even fool with the frosting and Butterfingers. No point. I have different plans for them- I will succeed at this cake! Just not today. Or tomorrow. But seriously, it looks GROSS:

 

 

Yes, folks. That cake never stood a chance. I murdered the poor thing. But I'm still going to eat it. And it's going to be delicious.