Southwestern Stuffed Peppers

**Recipe Adapted from Simplylovefood.blog.com

Found this recipe and was skeptical that I could get the hubby to eat these. After looking at the ingredients, I knew I'd have no problem convincing him that these would be delicious. And that they were! Not to mention, each pepper only has about 375-400 calories. AKA, I eat one and Greg eats two. Win!

Serves: 10 (AWESOME for leftovers!)
Total Prep & Cook Time: About an Hour

What You Need:

• Olive Oil
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 cup chopped onions
• 2 heaping tablespoons homemade taco seasoning (or the packaged kind)
• 2 cups cooked rice - I used Minute Brown Rice
• 5 large bell pepper, cut in have and seeds removed
• I used 3 and did 2 poblano peppers since my hubby is picky about his peppers!
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 (15 -16 oz) jar of salsa 
• Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Toppings:

• Sliced Avacado
• Sour Cream

What to Do:

Pre heat the over to 400 degrees. Once all of your peppers have been sliced and seeded, lightly coat the peppers with the olive oil and roast in a 9x13 baking dish about 20-25 minutes. 

While the peppers are cooking, brown your meat, cook your rice, and chop your onions. Once the peppers are done, remove the peppers from the oven. In a very large bowl, combine the cooked ground beef, chopped onions, taco season, rice, black beans, corn and salsa. Stir and mix well.

Carefully spoon the mixture into each of the peppers. You will have enough to make them almost overflow. Cook the peppers for another 15-20 minutes. 2 minutes before they are done, remove the peppers and sprinkle the tops with cheddar cheese. Place back in the over for 2 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Remove from the oven. Top with some avocado and a dollop of sour cream!  

Meal Planning

One of my least favorite things is to go to the grocery store. I'm a one trip a week kind of girl. If I need to go more than that, I tend to default and just go grab a bite to eat from a restaurant or fast food. A habit that I was more than ready to get rid of post-college.

Getting married and being a wife now responsible for feeding my always-hungry husband, that whole eating out thing had to change. A) It gets expensive. B) Eating out isn't necessarily the healthiest option (gotta keep up with the LGN diet, ladies!). C) Contrary to grocery shopping trips, I actually enjoy cooking and making creations in the kitchen!

So, to make eating dinners at home and packing lunches actually work, I was able to use my organization skills and create a meal-planning method that works for us. We've been doing this for several weeks now and it has saved us from several grocery store trips a week as well as many restaurant bills! Not to mention, when I get home from work after sitting in traffic for a while, I never have to waste time thinking about what to cook for dinner. It's already planned and I can immediately start cooking!

I started with just planning dinners, but after many weeks of running out of cereal mid-week, or not having anything for lunch and having to go out to eat, I changed my strategy and now plan all of our meals. Its more of a strategy to make sure that we have enough food to allow us to make it though a week, and it works! I plan my meals and sides before we head to the grocery store and then make my list accordingly. Your grocery bills might increase a tad, but the free time you have throughout the rest of the week is totally worth it. Since this method has worked so well for us, I wanted to share the spreadsheet you'll see on the front of our fridge each and every week!

If you try this out, let me know how it works for you! You can download it here.