Stuffed Peppers

Happy Friday!

Last night I made stuffed peppers.

I followed this {click here} recipe from Table for Two.. for the most part. I used ground chicken instead of ground turkey. I don't know, there's just something about ground turkey that gives me the eebie jeebies.

I had good intentions when I first started making these peppers, but things went down hill pretty quickly.

I got a little confused about what she meant when she said "place the peppers on the baking sheet up right"... what the heck? Up right as in the inside of the pepper is up, or up right as in the outside of the pepper is up? I tried to call my Mom for clarification, but she was busy so she couldn't answer. I was prepared to go down the list of my sisters until someone answered. I figured Cara or Jenny may have made stuffed peppers in the past so they might know, and if neither of them answered I knew I could laugh with Laura about how I was totally confused over such a simple thing. Thankfully Cara answered, technically Joe answered, but handed the phone over to Cara. I explained to her my confusion and she said, "well, how did you cut the peppers? long ways or side ways?"

DANG IT.

I cut the pepper long ways. You're supposed to cut them in half on the side, "to make little cups" as Cara explained it.

We decided it would still work, the cups just wouldn't be as deep as they normally would be. I thanked her for her time, and got back to cooking.

I decided since I had already kinda screwed things up, this was going to be a process that needed wine.

I drizzled the peppers (inside UP!) with olive oil and stuck them in the oven.

While the peppers were roasting, I diced 3/4 of a red onion and cooked the ground chicken and onion together. Once the chicken was thoroughly cooked, I added I cup of frozen corn and 1 and 1/2 cup of black beans.

I piled the mixture into the peppers, covered them with cheese (hey! the recipe said to "sprinkle a good amount of cheese"! I was just doing what I was told.) and plopped them in the oven. The recipe says to turn on the broiler and allow the cheese to melt, but I have a gas stove which means you basically have to lay your food on the floor to use the broiler... not happening! I miss using an electric stove like whoa.

The result was... they were okay. I felt like I put a TON of cumin, salt, and pepper in the mix but it was just kind of bland. I liked the yellow pepper better than the green pepper.

I think next time I will use pepper jack cheese instead of Monterrey Jack, and I would have added some other veggies to give it some more flavor. I dosed mine in Frank's Red Hot and that really kicked the meal up a notch.

Cheers to the weekend!