Stuff It

1. Southwestern Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

2. Spinach Stuffed Portabellas

3. Simple Stuffed Peppers

4. Stuffed Pepper Soup

Southwestern Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

A few years ago I discovered the ingredient search function on Allrecipes.com.  This feature allows you to enter ingredients you have on hand and search for recipes that use those ingredients.  Genius!  One of the first searches I tried was for dishes that combined sweet potatoes with black beans. After I tried a recipe that paired these two ingredients with Southwestern spices I’ve been hooked on the combination ever since.  This recipe for  Southwestern Stuffed Sweet Potatoes from Hell Yeah It’s Vegan hits all the buttons.

Tip: I simplified the avocado cream and reduced the number of dishes to wash by combining the avocado, lime juice and spices (skip the water) in a quart size ziploc freezer bag.  Squeeze out the air, close the bag, and squish everything together until there are no avocado chunks remaining.  Snip one corner of the bag and squeeze contents on top of the finished dish. I might have added a little chipotle chili powder to the stuffing mixture also because I have a bit of a chipotle problem.

Spinach Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

There are thousands of recipes for stuffed mushrooms out there.  I’ve eaten and cooked  some really good ones and I’ve eaten (and cooked!) some really bad ones. Bad stuffed mushrooms are often soggy but this recipe for Spinach Stuffed Portabellas from Allrecipes works because the mushrooms are partially cooked and drained before stuffing. Don’t skip that step.

I made these mushrooms vegetarian by using sun dried tomatoes in place of the pepperoni.  As you can see my mushrooms were a bit over stuffed but the filling cooked down nicely.  These make a nice side dish or vegetarian main dish.

Simple Stuffed Peppers

In the Health Transformation Program at CGH Medical Center our employees learn how to reduce their risks for diabetes and heart disease. One of their assignments is to cook a meal from scratch using whole fresh ingredients.  I’m calling this submission from Jason G. “Simple” Stuffed Peppers because it shows that cooking for yourself can be easy.  You don’t have to have a lot of fancy ingredients, or even a recipe.  Jason told me he didn’t have it down to a science yet and he wasn’t sure how helpful his cooking style is.  I think he did a great job!

Ingredients:

1lb ground turkey

1 jar of salsa (I had used homemade)

Boil-in-bag brown rice (1 package)

6-8 bell peppers (I prefer to use yellow and orange)

Instructions:

1. Brown turkey

2. Prepare rice according to package directions

3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees

4. Cut peppers in half starting near the stem and then scoop out seeds and remove rest of stem

5. Drain any excess fat out of turkey (hopefully none)

6. Add rice to turkey

7. Scoop in salsa about ¼ cup at a time in case you do not like the consistency to be too runny.

8. Scoop mixture into bell peppers

9. Bake for 20-25 minutes. If desired, add shredded cheese and bake for an additional five minutes.

Stuffed Green Pepper Soup

Our hospital cafe offers some pretty outstanding homemade soups.  If you love stuffed peppers you will enjoy this easy to follow recipe:

Ingredients:

2# Ground Beef, cooked and drain fat

2 ½ cups Canned Diced Tomatoes

12 oz. Fresh Chopped green Peppers

2-3 oz. Beef Base

1 ¼ Cups Uncooked Rice

Approximately 2- ½ Quarts Water

Salt and Pepper to Taste

Directions:

Add all ingredients to a large soup pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for minimum 2 hours. Yields 1 gallon.

Hope you enjoy stuffing your face with these recipes.  Next week’s post is all about beans!

#vegetarian #stuffedpeppers #chipotle #stuffedmushrooms #vegan #sweetpotatoes #southwestern #plantbased