Playing Paula

I have have annoyed all past roommates, family members and new husbands with my fascination with cooking. Taking an old recipe and revamping it into something that I like is fun and that's why I love the Food Network. It gets my mind working and I just have to get in the kitchen. I think it's why Kevin married me...
 hmm....

Well, there are a couple of my dishes that have definitely become his favorites. For instance, we have spaghetti with meat sauce at least once a week and enchiladas every couple weeks. Today I wanted to share with you my take on stuffed peppers.

When I googled "STUFFED PEPPERS", there are so many takes on this particular dish that it blew my mind. You can make it with tomato sauce, cream of chicken soup, with cheese, without cheese... the possibilities are endless.

First, my ingredients. I chose to use ground beef (or sausage, whichever you have on hand) onion (I'm not  a huge onion fan, so I just used up what I had left of one),  mushrooms, tomato sauce, cheese and rice for my filling.

To stretch my peppers, I cut them length wise and then slice off a bit on the bottom to make sort of a foot. This way they lay flat in the pan. (I put a dab of sauce under each pepper just so they don't burn)

 
Onto my filling. You'll want to start your rice first, that way it can cook while the veggies saute. For just the two of us, I make a cup of uncooked rice, which actually goes pretty far. Then, I like to chop my veggies super small. There's nothing worse to me than a huge chunk of onion or soggy mushroom. 

I love love love my Pampered Chef chopper. Similar to a slap chop but so much easier to clean and the blades are super sharp. It's frickin awesome.

As you can see, I threw in the bits of pepper that I trimmed off. You can really use whatever veggies you want in this filling. I would have loved some squash or zucchini but I didn't have any on hand... :(

After chopping, I start cooking them in a deep pot and once their tender, add in the ground beef. Once the beef has browned, I add in some of my rice. I would guess about a cup of COOKED rice.

And then just enough of tomato sauce to moisten the mixture. To add some more flavor, I like a couple dashes of hot sauce and some parmesan cheese. Yum.

All there is after that is to fill your pepper-cups, top with another light layer of sauce, and sprinkle on some mozzarella cheese.

You like that camera work huh? Oh yeah.

Cover it with foil and pop it into a 400 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes. After that, remove the foil to let your cheese get just a bit golden.

So there ya have it. My take on a classic.

Enjoy!