Taco Stuffed Mini Bell Peppers

Last week, I made this recipe and shared with my parents. It was so good that my mom requested I make it again the next night! Not only is it pretty simple, but is also reheats really well, so it's a recipe that I'm sure I'll be making more once school starts back! It would be a pretty appetizer (just ignore my horrible photograph), but we loved it for dinner as an entree. As written, this makes about 4 servings. I can take or leave regular bell peppers, but LOVE the sweet ones! This recipe is based on this one from  The Girl Who Ate Everything.

What You'll Need:

• 1 lb bag of sweet mini bell peppers
• 1 lb ground meat (I used ground sirloin, but any ground meat would work)
• Homemade Seasoning (adjust to meet your taste preferences)
• 1 Tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• 1.5 teaspoons ground pepper
• 1 cup shredded cheese
• 3/4 cup water
• A handful of fresh cilantro
• 1/2 cup Greek Yogurt 
• 2 Tablespoons lime juice

What to Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Brown ground beef (or other meat). Once fully cooked, drain beef.
3. While your beef is browning, cut peppers in half length-wise and deseed. Basically, you're making little pepper boats. Line a baking sheet or dish with pepper boats.
4. Sacrifice enough of your pepper halves to create about 3/4 cup of diced pepper.
5. Once meat is browned and drained, add in diced pepper, seasoning mix, and water. Stir and simmer for about 5-10 minutes, or until water is soaked up and peppers are soft.
6. Fill pepper boats with ground beef mixture and bake for about 15 minutes. During the last 5 or so minutes, sprinkle on cheese and allow it to melt. (I like a little crispiness, so I turned the oven to broil for the last few minutes.)
7. In a food processor or blender, process your cilantro, greek yogurt, and lime juice to create a sauce to drizzle over finished peppers. You can adjust your sauce ingredients to your taste preferences. (Don't skip this....it is SO delicious!)
8. Serve peppers with cilantro yogurt sauce for drizzling or dipping!

Food: Bacon Meatballs with Barbecue Sauce

The Super Bowl was tonight, which of course meant craving Super Bowl food. I wanted to make something that would be delicious, but not quite as bad for me as all the other food we were planning on serving up. Plus, I needed something that could double as a couple lunches for the week ahead. I settled on meatballs, and ended up combing a couple of recipes to make bacon meatballs and a tangy barbecue sauce. The recipe I used is an adaption and combination of these two: PaleOMG's Bacon Meatballs and The Pioneer Woman's BBQ Comfort Meatballs. The Bacon Meatballs are paired with a Mango Honey Mustard Sauce that sounds awesome...but I'm allergic to mustard, so had to figure something else out. Here's what I ended up with:

Bacon Meatballs (recipe adapted from PaleOMG, cooking method from Pioneer Woman...this version is not paleo)

1 pound of ground sirloin

4 slices of bacon, diced

1/2 sweet onion, diced

1 egg, whisked

1/4 cup flour (divided)

2 teaspoons chili powder

Oil or cooking fat

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Throw the diced bacon into a skillet and start to brown.
3. Once the bacon starts rendering enough fat for the onion to not stick, add the onions to the skillet. Stir the bacon and onion around until the bacon is cooked and the onions are soft. Remove and drain on a paper towel.
4. In a bowl, combine the ground sirloin, bacon, onions, egg, spices, and a couple Tablespoons of the flour. Mix it all up with your hands.
5. Scoop out meatballs and roll into balls (I used a small cookie scoop to make sure they were all the same size). Roll each meatball in remaining flour to coat.
6. Get the oil or cooking fat of your choice hot (or just use the bacon grease if there's enough) and add the meatballs to the skillet. Cook enough to sear each one. 
7. Once the meatballs have reached the brown-ness of your liking, remove to a parchment covered baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until done.

Barbecue Sauce (adapted from Pioneer Woman)

2 cups of ketchup

2 Tablespoons of sugar

5 Tablespoons of distilled white vinegar

4 Tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

4 Tablespoons of minced onion

1.5 Tablespoons of grape jelly

1. While meatballs are cooking, combine all sauce ingredients in a sauce pan. 
2. Cook on medium low heat, stirring frequently, until mixture comes to a boil.

Once the meatballs are cooked, you can either pour the sauce over them or serve on the side as a dipping sauce, depending on your preference.

Since it was Super Bowl Sunday and I knew we'd be grazing, I dumped the meatballs and sauce in the crockpot after cooking to keep it warm.

This recipe received raves from everyone!

This Week's Eats: August 26 - September 1

I'm being lazy and uploading this from my phone- so here is this week's plan ( a couple days late).

This Week's Eats: August 11 - 17

This is my first week of having to go back to work almost every day (classes start Thursday), so I'm back to prepping meals and lunches. I'm determined to stick with it this time, and the goal is to cook at least 3-4 meals a week and several sides, which will make it easy to pack lunches that aren't processed each day for work.

Here's what's on tap for this week:

Sunday: Crab Cakes, Tomato and Avocado Salad, and sweet potato fries
Monday: Paleo Pepper Steak, Maple Bacon Sweet Potatoes
Tuesday: Skinny Coconut Shrimp
Wednesday: Family Dinner at the Grandparents
Thursday: Breakfast for dinner
Friday: leftovers

Also making:

• Guacamole Deviled Eggs
• Paleo Candy Bars
• Spicy Dr. Pepper Pork (to have for lunches and to freeze)

This Week's Eats: July 1 - July 7

Just like last week, I'm cooking my way through several Cooking Light recipes.

Shrimp and Shiitake Rice Bowls: At the request of my parents, made this one again on the night I cooked at their house. Again, so simple, so delicious. Doubled everything so we all had leftovers for lunch the next day. (Actually made Sunday night...with plans to make again Friday for company.)

Seared Scallops with Summer Vegetables and Beurre Blanc: This was also super simple, and delicious. Scallops are my favorite...I just wish they weren't quite so expensive here. I didn't really care for the Beurre Blanc, so probably would make it without that. (Monday night)

Maple Bacon Mashed Sweet Potatoes: Made this to go with the scallops. Cooked the potatoes in the microwave, scrape out the pulp, mash, add a little butter, milk, and syrup (I used agave), and top with crumbled bacon. I mean, couldn't be bad, right? Right.

Crab Cakes with Spicy Remoulade: I have plans to make this one, but crab is ridiculously expensive. Since I don't want to spend $22 on a pound of crabmeat, I'll look around or wait until I can find it cheaper.

Spice Rubbed NY Strips with Avocado Lime Salsa: Yep, another repeat of last week....because why not when it was a delicious success!

This Week's Eats: June 23 - 30

Each week, my goal is to cook at least 3 dinners at home. Instead of planning specific days for each recipe, I'll just choose recipes and decide what to cook day by day. Everything from this week came from Cooking Light's April 2013 issue.

Chicken with Quick Chili Verde: This was delicious! I really liked the Chili Verde sauce, and could see it being great on steak too.

Spice-Rubbed New York Strips with Avocado Lime Salsa: Oh wow. This was excellent. I'm on an avocado kick lately, and the salsa that went with this was great. And so pretty! I used jalapeño instead of serrano chilis, but other than that made it exactly as the recipe lists.

Shrimp and Shiitake Rice Bowls: I'm not a huge rice fan, but I do love shrimp, so I tried this one out anyway. I subbed the Uncle Ben's Wild Rice and Brown mix for plain brown rice since I already had it, and made this on the night I was cooking for my parents. We all loved it! This was probably the quickest of the 3 meals I made this week, although all were done in 30 minutes or less.

Meal Planning

For a really long time, I tried to plan out meals for the week. I'd sit down on Sunday and plan out what I'd cook each night, then make a list of ingredients, then go grocery shopping. I'm a planner, so I love planning aspect of doing that, but then my plans would fall apart when I decided I wasn't craving chicken on Monday and chicken was what I'd written I would cook on Monday. Or something would come up at work and I'd stay late and not feel like spending an hour cooking dinner when I got home. Or maybe I'd get a call from a friend or my parents offering a last minute dinner invitation.

So to kind of remedy that, last week I still sat down and made my meal plan. But instead of deciding on which nights I would cook each meal, I just picked 3 meals that looked good, bought the ingredients for those, and then decided day by day which recipe worked for me. Since for the most part, I just cook for myself, 3 meals a week seemed like a good goal and would easily be enough for dinners, leftovers for lunches, and a couple nights of leftovers with at least one night out.

Is this rocket science, new, or an incredible idea? Nope, not at all, but I want to document meals here in this space so I have an easy place to come back to for repeats. So hopefully, I'll be posting weekly meal ideas for each week on Sundays.

We'll see how long I can keep this up!

This Week's Eats: Aug 18 - 24

With the new job (which I'm loving) comes the opportunity to take my lunch to work again! I really see this as a good thing, because back when I was a classroom I did take my lunch everyday...and I found myself eating MUCH healthier when I took my lunch! So if I'm going to be taking my lunch, I need to get back to cooking something to take! (Which also means healthier dinners!)

Monday 8/18- Grilled Balsamic Flank Steak

Tuesday 8/19- Salsa Chicken

Wednesday 8/20- Skinny Coconut Shrimp

Thursday 8/21- Egg Salad

Friday 8/22- Leftovers!

Week's Eats in Review

Sunday: The Deen Bros. Lighter Crab Cakes (subbing Greek yogurt for light mayo) & Penne Pasta with Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce

The crab cakes were okay...they didn't stick together well. I've subbed the yogurt for Mayo in other crab cake recipes, so not sure why this one wasn't great. The pasta was okay. Nothing wrong with it...just not something I'm dying to have again.

Monday: Cilantro Lime Shrimp

Oh my goodness this shrimp! It is delicious and so simple! The lime juice and cilantro give it just the right kick. Love, and is in the regular rotation.

Tuesday: Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin with Zucchini Parmesan Crisps

Fail, didn't make.

Wednesday: Roasted Tomatoes with Shrimp and Feta

Fail, didn't make.

Thursday: Paleo Pepper Steak

This is also so good and simple! I love this!

Friday: leftovers or (homemade) pizza!

Let's just say

that day 1 of going back to Paleo was a delicious success.

Breakfast: Eggs and bacon (I’m eating bacon..I mean its in the meal-plan from The Paleo Solution.

Snack: Almonds

Lunch: Salad and cherries

Snack: Forgotten so not eaten

Dinner: Paleo Pepper Steak (oh-my-I-could-eat-this-every-day-good and so super easy and quick) I did use sirloin steak that I cut into strips for this

I thought about taking pictures of my pretty dinner- but not getting home until after 6 meant I was too hungry to eat once it was cooked to stop and take a pic!

Today I went back to work with my first of the 10 hour days that our district is working this summer to save money (4 10s instead of 5 8s). It’s 9:30, which means bedtime for me so I can get up at 5 to run before work :)