Friday's Fabulous Foods

It's MARCH!!  I'm very excited about this fact because we move in 3 weeks!  We will be finished here in 4!  Evidently, I don't know how to count...I kept thinking we only had 3 weeks left here, but March is a weird month with 5 Saturdays in it.  Oh well, that's one more week to work out as much as I want. :]


Well, today I wanted to share with you a (fairly) yummy recipe.  I only say "fairly" yummy because I tweaked the recipe to reflect the ingredients that I actually have right now.  Next time, I will try it with the actual ingredients.  (I just don't really want to have to pack up some extra spices (or PAY for the spice), when I have those packed away.  Lame, I know.)


Anyway, introducing Friday's Fabulous Foods.  I want to share recipes that I've been cookin' up during the week that have been successful!  As of now, those successful dishes have occurred in my crockpot, because the oven that we have sucks.  It took me an hour and a half to bake my parents' anniversary cake.  Boo.  I can always count on my crockpot!


I have wanted to try making Stuffed Peppers ever since I saw Rachael Ray make them on her show.  I found the recipe on Pinterest, located here.  


Here's the ingredients that I used:

• 2lbs ground pork (subbed ground beef)
• 4 large green peppers (used variety of color)
• 1 large onion
• 2 carrots (used several baby carrots)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 head of cauliflower
• 6 oz can of tomato paste
• 1 tbsp dry oregano
• 1 tbsp dry or fresh tarragon (subbed oregano)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instead of green peppers, I chose a variety of colored peppers.

I cut the tops off and cleaned them out.

I chopped up the garlic, onion, cauliflower, and carrots.  It called for them to be put in a food processor, but what do you know?  It's packed away.  Chopping all of that up took about 30 minutes, also because I don't have any of my nice knives here, either.  I think that the garlic flavor would be better if it were shredded rather than chopped.


Instead of using ground pork, I used ground beef.  I also substituted more oregano for tarragon.  I looked this up on the internet, because the dry tarragon cost over $5 for a small jar. Ouch!!


So I put it all in a bowl and used my hands to mix it all in.

(Looks like mush!)

Then I just scooped them in the peppers and put them in the crockpot.  The recipe said to put the extra beef/veggie mixture in between the peppers. 

(The handle fell off the yellow pepper...oops!)

Cook on low for 8-10 hours.  I think that since I was using ground beef, I only needed to cook it on low for 6 hours.  After cooking them for 7 1/2 hours, the peppers were really soft and fell right apart.

It was pretty good, I thought.  I really enjoyed the cauliflower in the mixture.  I didn't think I would.  The beef mixture needed some more salt and pepper, but I really want to try this recipe again with ground pork. :]  Happy cooking!