Stuffed Bell Peppers

When Corrie (my sister in law) came to visit for my graduation she was wonderful and cooked a bunch of meals for us! She was showing me a bit of what she was doing and how things worked, which actually is part of what got me ready to start my cooking experiments! Anyways, one of the dishes she made was this stuffed bell pepper recipe, which was absolutely delicious! So she sent me the recipe and allowed me to share it on here and hopefully I will make her proud! :) It really did not require that many ingredients and was a relatively cheaper meal to make!

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Ingredients
6 large green bell peppers
¼ cup olive oil
½ cup chopped onion
3/4 lb ground beef
¾ cup grated parmesan cheese
2 cups cooked rice
3 tbsp chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp red wine (optional – I did not use this)
¾ cups tomato sauce (Recipe provided below)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Trim the stems and remove the seeds from the peppers and rinse
In a skillet heat oil and add onion and sauté until onions are transparent
Add the meat and stir until it is fully cooked (not red at all)
Stir in the remaining ingredients except the tomato sauce and let it cool
Stuff the peppers with the cooled mix and place on a greased baking dish
Pour the tomato sauce around and on the peppers
Bake until peppers are tender (30-40 minutes)
Baste occasionally with the sauce

The sauce recipe I used is actually the same from the  Pesto Stuffed Pasta Shells, but I will post it again so it's just in the same place as this recipe. 

Herbed Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (yum!)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1 (14.5 oz) can no salt added whole tomatoes, undrained and chopped
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon no salt added tomato paste
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Method:
Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until hot. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring constantly, 4 minutes or until tender. Add basil, oregano, and fennel seeds; cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Add tomatoes, and remaining ingredients; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, 15 minutes. Serve with pasta. Yield: 2 1/4 cups

Nutrition per tablespoon:
Calories: 5     Carbs: 0.9 g     Cholesterol: 0 mg     Fat: 0.1 g (Saturated fat: 0g)     Protein: 0.2 g    Sodium: 10mg

Here are the peppers before I put them in the oven. I also put tomato sauce on top of each one but I wanted to show what the filling looked like!

And here is the final product! I didn't actually take a picture of how I served them because everyone was just so hungry. But let me tell you, this recipe is wonderful! I highly recommend it to anyone!! It was easy to make, and delicious to eat, I will definitely be making this one again, it's a crowd pleaser! So thank you Corrie for this tasty recipe and I can't wait to try some of your others!

Falafels

Alon (a friend from Israel) translated and sent me a recipe to make falafels, which if you have ever had a good falafel, you know they are delicious! I was going to make it for my dad's birthday but we ended up going out instead so yesterday was the day for falafels! It ended up being a little bit of a panicked cooking experience but I now know how to do it properly haha. I went to the grocery store and everything I bought was basically considered a "specialty food" so if you are wanting to eat for cheap, this is not the route to go! However if you are wanting to eat yummy, I recommend this! :)

Ingredients:
1 lb chickpeas not canned
1 cup chopped parsley
1 cup chopped cilantro
4-5 mashed garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 large onion cut in quarters
1 teaspoon baking powder
frying oil canola is best

Method:
dry the chickpeas very well
grind chickpeas and onion in a meat grinder
add everything except baking powder and stir
put aside for 30 min
add baking powder and mix very well
either cook now, or if not ready, place in refrigerator and take out 20 minutes before cooking
heat up the oil very high and then lower a bit
make small ping pong size balls and deep fry until it becomes a dark
golden brown
take out and dry the oil


First of all I should say that I doubled the recipe because I figured my parents and I love falafels so having plenty of leftovers was a good thing. So I was having trouble with the consistency of the mixture, it wasn't sticking to itself well enough to hold shape in the ping pong sized balls, so I wasn't sure what to do but I decided to try adding flour to them.That did help a little but not much, I just ended up getting a small ice cream scoop and making the balls that way, not ideal, I definitely need to figure out what went wrong there! Another problem I had with this one is I have never deep fried anything in my life! So I wasn't sure how hot to get the oil, or how low to cook it on, or how long to leave them in...can you say disaster? Well so I guessed on all of this and I kind of guessed wrong. I had the oil too hot when I cooked them so they turned a dark brown almost black on the outside instead of a golden brown (oops!) and the inside did not cook as much as it should have. Of course I didn't know this until I was all done cooking.

Here are the falafels right after they were cooked, you can see how some are darker than others. I tried to fix my mistake as I was going but next time will be much better!

I decided to cut one of the falafels in half so you could see the inside! It's very green and very delicious!! Yum!

So here is everything I served with the falafels, I did kind of a falafel buffet so everyone could put what they wanted on it. I had the falafels, salad, hummus, tzatziki sauce, feta cheese, tihini sauce, and pita bread. Can I just say that this mean was well worth the cost even though I didn't cook it properly!

Here is my falafel!! It filled me up! Overall a very good meal, and it made a ton! I have leftovers for more meals which is always a plus! Thanks Alon for such a great recipe! I definitely have a lot to learn/improve on for this though.

Chicken Shish Kabobs

I haven't cooked in a couple of days because I went downtown to stay with Rachel! So today my mom and I went to work out and then got frozen yogurt, it was delicious! Then we went grocery shopping (without a recipe on hand!) so we decided to make chicken shish kabobs since we already had some frozen chicken at home. We bought a bunch of fresh vegetables and we were not sure what veggies work well on the grill so we just picked what sounded good to us! So the recipe I will put on here is actually made up by me and my mom!

Ingredients:
1 zucchini
1 squash
1 Sweet potato
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
whole mushrooms
5 green onions (small ones)
broccoli
1 red bell pepper
Italian salad dressing
Pinch of rosemary, basil, salt, and pepper

Method:
Cut all of the ingredients into 2 inch pieces and place them into a single dish.
Cook the Sweet Potatoes in microwave about 3-5 minutes until slightly soft to ensure they will cook evenly with the rest of the kabob
Pour the salad dressing, rosemary, basil, salt, and pepper onto all of the other vegetables and meat and place in the refrigerator for 20 - 30 minutes to marinate
Take out the dish and stick all of the food onto skewers in any desired order
Place the kabobs onto the grill and turn every 3-5 minutes until everything is cooked through
Take the kabobs off of the grill and serve immediately

The pictures go in order from marinating the food, to the uncooked kabobs, to the kabobs cooking, to the final product! They really turned out very pretty, I loved all of the colors. Overall I really did like how it turned out. We didn't quite get them cooked long enough so we ended up microwaving the chicken a little bit longer so make sure when you make this you really get the chicken cooked all the way through! The onions we chose (we picked them because we thought they would look good) really didn't cook evenly through with everything else so I would not recommend those. Perhaps use shallots or a smaller type of onion. The sweet potatoes were really delicious and I would definitely put those in your kabobs! The dish definitely had enough flavor to it and there was plenty of food! We had a skewer each and had a ton of leftovers and I think it will make really tasty leftovers. Overall I was a fan of the chicken kabobs and recommend them, I'd make them again and I learned a lot from my first time with these. I really was scared to use the grill, but my mom helped and it doesn't seem as intimidating anymore!

For desert we bought these delicious cherries! They were huge and tasted oh so good! I got to practice my cherry stem tying skills some more (Conner would be so proud of me! hahaha). Anyways,  tonight was a very successful and delicious meal.

Yum! Here are the cherries :)

Pesto-Stuffed Pasta Shells

This was a crazy night! Earlier today I saw a cookbook that my mom has that is called Low-Fat, High-Flavor Cookbook. It sounded good to me so while I was eating breakfast this morning I was flipping through the pages and this recipe stood out to me for some reason. I think because I don't really know my opinion on pesto sauce and I know my mom likes spinach, so I figured it was time to find out! I went grocery shopping before my workout since I was going to rice village at 7 to go to a Hillel event with Rachel at the chocolate bar!! Well, after my workout I had a lot to accomplish in just one hour and I wasn't sure if it was possible. Let me tell you, I am officially a baller mutlitasker!!

I got home and immediately pulled out the recipe and started chopping and cutting and measuring things to get the sauce ready. I made my own tomato sauce instead of buying a can one and it was sooo much better. The sauce I started first and once it was completely ready then I went back for the pasta. Big mistake, I should have had the pasta going while I was making the sauce (yet another thing I need to work on, the timing with everything).

Once the sauce was complete and the pasta was in the water cooking I sprinted to take a super fast shower. Ran back out to the kitchen in my towel and finished off the pasta and drained it, then ran to get my hair dryer. I ended up cooking the pasta a little too long and they were kind of falling apart which is a bummer since I had to stuff them. So I got to work stuffing the pesto/spinach mixture (which smelled really good!) in to the pasta shells and put them in the sauce to bake. Once I put the dish in the oven I  started blow drying my hair in the kitchen! I then ran to my room with only 10 minutes left on the timer and I changed clothes and straightened my hair. Ran back to the kitchen to see that I had 2 minutes left. So of course ran back to the bathroom to put on make up and then the timer went off right as I was finishing! I went and took it out of the oven and I grabbed a couple to scarf down really fast because I had to leave for the chocolate bar right away!

So here is the recipe for the tomato sauce:

Herbed Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (yum!)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1 (14.5 oz) can no salt added whole tomatoes, undrained and chopped
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon no sald added tomato paste
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Method:
Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until hot. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring constantly, 4 minutes or until tender. Add basil, oregano, and fennel seeds; cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Add tomatoes, and remaining ingredients; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, 15 minutes. Serve with pasta. Yield: 2 1/4 cups

Nutrition per tablespoon:
Calories: 5     Carbs: 0.9 g     Cholesterol: 0 mg     Fat: 0.1 g (Saturated fat: 0g)     Protein: 0.2 g    Sodium: 10mg

I absolutely loved this sauce, I can't wait to use it for other meals!

Pesto-Stuffed Pasta Shells
Ingredients:
2 (10 ounce) packages of frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup Pesto Sauce
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
20 jumbo pasta shells, uncooked
2 1/4 cups Herbed Tomato Sauce
Vegetable cooking spray

Method:
Drain spinach, and press between paper towels to remove excess moisture. Combine spinach, Pesto Sauce, cottage cheese, 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, pepper, and nutmeg; stir well.
Cook pasta shells according to package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain. Stuff cheese mixture evenly into cooked shells.
Spoon 1 cup Herbed Tomato Sauce into a baking dish coated with cooking spray. Place filled shells over sauce. Pour remaining Herbed Tomato Sauce over shells. Cover and bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven, and sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Serve immediately.
Yields 5 servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 365   Carbs: 49.2 g   Cholesterol: 11 mg   Fat: 7.6 g (Saturated fat: 2.9 g)   Protein: 25.3 g   Sodium: 800 mg

Alright so there it is! I didn't get a picture of how I served it since I ate in  such a hurry and had to leave. But I didn't like it at first, but if I added more sauce it made it a lot better. I kind of like it, so maybe it will grow on me? I don't know...not my favorite. But I like how they looked when they came out, and like I said, it made the house smell wonderful!

At the chocolate bar I paid 5 dollars for a ginormous piece of cake! I didn't get a picture of it though because I was just so excited to dig in! But I did take a picture of what is left of it now haha! It was called night and day I think, but oh my gosh it is decadent for sure!

Gnocchi with Zucchini

After Monday's amazing dinner I was not too sure what direction to go in today so I just started researching. I worked out a little later than usual so I didn't have as much time to search for something and then go buy the food. So a key part of what I was going to cook tonight was the time factor, I was looking for something that took under 30 minutes. I ended up going back to eatingwell.com for this recipe and I decided to make a vegetarian dish tonight. It really didn't require too many ingredients and the active time cooking was relatively fast! Yet again I was a little above 30 minutes but this is something I will improve with practice.

Here is the recipe I went with for night 3:

Ingredients

• 1 pound fresh or frozen gnocchi
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 medium shallots, chopped
• 1 pound zucchini, (about 3 small), very thinly sliced lengthwise (see Tip)
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Preparation

1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Cook gnocchi until they float, 3 to 5 minutes or according to package directions. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook until the butter is beginning to brown, about 2 minutes. Add shallots and zucchini and cook, stirring often, until softened, 2 to 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, salt, nutmeg and pepper and continue cooking, stirring often, until the tomatoes are just starting to break down, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in Parmesan and parsley. Add the gnocchi and toss to coat. Serve immediately.

Nutrition

3.      Per serving: 424 calories; 10 g fat (6 g sat, 0 g mono); 25 mg cholesterol; 66 g carbohydrates; 17 g protein; 5 g fiber; 753 mg sodium; 539 mg potassium.

4.      Nutrition Bonus: Vitamin C (75% daily value), Vitamin A (35% dv), Calcium (28% dv)

 I was proud of how nicely I had everything all cut up and prepped so nicely! This is huge improvement for me!

Ok, so here is the actual dish right after I finished it. I learned a good lesson tonight...zucchini cooks fairly fast so if I were to make this dish again I wouldn't put the zucchini in first, it would probably be more towards the end so it would hold its shape better instead of looking like mush. 

I know that the bowl is a mess (still working on presentation!), but here it is when I served it. I did like this dish, however, it was not my favorite. I think I would make it again but I may want to try to alter it in some way but I'm not quite sure how yet. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

So that's it so far, I am all caught up! I am really looking forward to what I will be cooking next and I will be sure to try an keep this blog up to date.

Biftekia Psita`

After a successful round 1 on the cooking front I was really looking forward to finding a new recipe to try Monday night (8/23/2010). I really don't know what it was, but for some reason I was really wanting something Greek! But I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to find something easy enough to make; for some reason when I think of Greek food it just seems so intricate and hard to cook. Well I started doing my research and I found this really great website with a bunch of Greek recipes! I plan on returning to that site for more recipes in the future for sure. The website I found is http://www.squidoo.com/greekcuisine. Basically this one is a Greek style beef patty and it was surprisingly simple! Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

1 lb Lean minced beef (I used lean ground beef)
1 medium onion
1 garlic clove
1 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
1 Tbs whole milk
2 Tbs olive oil
1 small chunk Italian parsley
Dried oregano or Italian seasoning
Salt and Pepper

METHOD

Place the meat in a mixing bowl. Chop the onions and the garlic (I use a food processor so they become like pulp) and add them to the meat. Thinly chop the parsley and add it to the bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients in the meat mixture and knead until you have a solid dough. If for some reason you think the dough is kind of liquidy or oily add some more crumbs.

Make the patties at the size of your palm and place them in a tray. You can cook them either in the grill or bake them or of course barbecue them. If you just bake them you can place the patties on a deeper tray and add lemony potatoes (you can find the recipe below). You bake them for around 30-45 min in F400 (adding water if needed for the potatoes) and you don't need to turn them over.
Served with greek salad and feta cheese

Here are what they look like right out of the oven! They smelled fantastic! I really just wanted to eat them all right up immediately .

Here is how I served it. I couldn't find any Tzatziki dip unfortunately and I wasn't sure where to find a good recipe to make it so I just topped it with feta cheese instead. I served it with a Greek salad with added almonds. This has by far been my favorite meal of the three I have made so far. It was seriously so delicious and we all went back for seconds! It makes such a great amount; after the seconds I still had leftovers for lunch the next day. I highly recommend this one and I will for sure be making it again.

Chicken and Spiced Apples

I was trying to figure out how I was going to go about this experiment this last weekend because I didn't really want to be confined to just one cookbook or one type of food or anything. So I decided I will be using the internet and recommendations/suggestions by friends for everything. One of the main requirements for these recipes is that I want to try to make healthy meals. I'm not talking about cardboard only 2 pieces of celery kind of healthy...I mean come on, I love to eat haha. So as long as it isn't deep fried with 8 pounds of butter and 1 cup of salt, I think it can be a possibility. My parents and I just recently started the 90 day challenge at Lifetime Fitness and basically that's just whoever can lose the most percentage of their body weight wins. Well I have been doing really well with the exercising but the eating is the hardest part for me. I found this awesome website though that I think will help with that! Eatingwell.com is awesome; it has a lot of variety and shows how long it will take, the portions it will make, and the nutritional breakdown.

So for my first experiment I found this recipe called chicken and spiced apples on eatingwell.com. I love apples and I like chicken, but together? I really was not sure how this would turn out. But it incorporated a lot of spices and I really felt like doing something like that. I found that the prep to cooking really kind of sucks, I'm by no means a pro when it comes to knife skills! I think with practice, though, it may start to feel more natural. So I made this meal and my parents said it smelled amazing when I was cooking it. I really need to work on my timing (I am a lot slower than the recipe suggests) and presentation! For this recipe I decided to place the chicken and apples on a bed of brown rice with broccoli and onions mixed in.

Here is the recipe I used for this dish:

Ingredients

• 2 apples, preferably Braeburn, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 3 teaspoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1 1/8 teaspoons herbes de Provence, (see Note), divided
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed
• 1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

Preparation

1. Toss apple slices with lemon juice and cinnamon in a small bowl. Heat 1 teaspoon oil and 1 teaspoon butter in a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Keep warm.
2. Mix 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence, salt and pepper. Place chicken between sheets of plastic wrap and pound with a meat mallet or the bottom of a small saucepan to a 1/2-inch thickness. Sprinkle the chicken on both sides with the seasoning mixture.
3. Heat 1 teaspoon oil and 1 teaspoon butter in a large skillet over high heat. Add half the chicken and cook until no longer pink in the center, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove to a platter and keep warm. Add the remaining 1 teaspoon oil and 1 teaspoon butter to the pan; heat over high heat. Cook the remaining chicken in the same manner.
4. Add broth, lemon zest, the remaining 1/8 teaspoon herbes and any accumulated juices from the chicken to the pan. Cook, stirring to scrape up any browned bits, until slightly reduced, about 3 minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve with the sautéed apples.

Tips & Notes

• Ingredient note:
• Herbes de Provence is a mixture of dried herbs commonly used in the south of France. You can find commercial mixtures in specialty stores, but it is easy to make your own. Mix 1 tablespoon each (or equal proportions) dried thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and savory in a small jar. If desired, add a pinch of dried lavender and crushed aniseed.

Nutrition

Per serving: 191 calories; 6 g fat (2 g sat, 2 g mono); 72 mg cholesterol; 6 g carbohydrates; 0 g added sugars; 27 g protein; 1 g fiber; 292 mg sodium; 342 mg potassium.
Nutrition Bonus: Niacin (65% daily value), Selenium (29% dv).

  I made this on 8/22/2010 , so that begins my experimenting!

Add on: (because my friend, Priya, so nicely pointed out that I didn't say anything about how it was). I was surprised with how this one tasted!! The apples actually made it so good, I wanted each bite to have apples in it because I loved them so much! I accidentally overcooked one of the chickens (not mine haha) but when I had it cooked correctly I really enjoyed it. The spices made it taste really interesting and it definitely filled all of us up! The leftovers were also very delicious as well!