Friday, December 30, 2005

Slow Cooker Stuffed Peppers

I had never made stuffed peppers before, and wasn't sure whether I was going for a Mexican or Italian version here, and it kind of ended up both. But good!

Ingredients


1 pound Ground beef
Onion
garlic
Worcestershire sauce
Cheese
Tomato sauce
6 Green peppers
beef broth
rice
salt/pepper


I didn't have a recipe in front of me, and called my mom to tell me what I needed to cook before putting it the slow cooker. I think she got the recipe out of a Fix it and Forget It book. I have no idea which version, but I guess this is an adaption of that.

Cooking part

Cook one cup of rice. I started this in the rice cooker first.
Chop the onions and brown them with the ground beef.
Cut the top off of the peppers (By the way, when did they get to be 2$ a piece? Next time I'm buying them at the market.) and take out as much of the white and seed part as you can.
Then the recipe said to parboil them, which I didn't have time to figure out exactly, so I boiled them for about 5 minutes and them plunged them in cold water. Since there were 6 of these peppers in the pot, there was not a lot of water going around them.
Mix the ground beef with the cooked rice. Add some salt and pepper and some minced garlic.
Carefully spoon the mixture into the peppers.
Lay the peppers in the bottom of the crock pot. I just got a giant one for Christmas so they all fit, but I imagine that layering them would work fine.
Sprinkle cheese on top. I used mexiblend and mozzarella.

Mix a cup or two of tomato sauce with a couple of good shakes of Worcestershire sauce. Pour that over the peppers.

At this point I realized I had some stuff in the fridge that would probably taste good with the rest of it and through in some mushrooms and roasted red peppers and half jars of stuff in the fridge. The mushrooms worked out the best as an add on, and I can see them being really good inside the pepper.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

They were better than I thought they'd be.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Frito Salad

Last night featured my old roommate Rebecca's Frito Salad.

Salad:

Lettuce
Shredded cheddar
Carrots
Tomatoes
Onions
Green red or orange pepper
Can of kidney beans, drained
Catalina dressing (fancy word for French!)
Half a bag of fritos (or more if your frito crazy)

Assemble and pig out.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Lentil Soup

One thing that can get me pretty cranky is not being able to figure out what to cook, and wishing I could just eat something easy without thinking all the time.

I was feeling cranky and went to take a bath on Saturday to try to calm down. When I came out, Noah had made a large pot of soup with lentils, thawed out barbecue that our roommate David made a few weeks ago, onions, celery, and thyme. It was really delicious, and just what I needed on an almost winter day.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Acorn Squash

I have already sent Shauna, the Gluten Free Girl, a fan letter about her site, and then she got me thinking about winter squash. I bought spaghetti squash about a month a go, planning to cook it pasta style when Noah got to it before me and tried to roast it. That didn't work quite right. It was all stringy and the wrong consistency. I'll try again soon.

I had an acorn squash on the shelf and used Mark Bittman's 1st way to cook them: cut in half, scooped out, and then put butter & salt and pepper, and cooked @ 400 degrees. He also suggested some sweetener: brown sugar or maple syrup, but I forgot. He suggested an hour, I took it out at 45 minutes and it was probably ready at 30 minutes. I think Shauna cooked it pretty much the same way, maybe with olive oil and sea salt.

Although I already knew it was supposed to be delicious, mouth-watering, etc... I wasn't prepared for how simply good it was gonna be.

My dad has a tendency to find one recipe that he really likes and then cook it every four days for the next six months. I'm pretty sure I have the same problem. Luckily How to Cook Everything suggests 2 more ways, and I'll try those before forcing my dinnermates to eat more of Acorn Squash the same way again and again every night for the next month.

Even though that's all I want for dinner tonight.