Italian-Style Stuffed Red Peppers and a Challenge

Walter and I started the 10-Day Real Food Challenge on Sunday, so I thought I'd share a couple of recipes I've used this week. If you're curious about the challenge, I highly recommend clicking on the link.

Basically you commit to eating nothing but whole, natural foods for 10 days. The reason we are doing this is because I have a really bad habit. My name is Heather and I'm addicted to sugar. Even though I wasn't gorging myself with this tasty little treat, I was definitely eating more than I should and I was starting to feel the effects. Therefore, enter the real food challenge.

The foods you eat during the 10-day challenge must be 100% all-natural (preferably organic/grass fed/ hormone & antibiotic free). If you must buy something that comes prepackaged, the ingredient list can not contain more than 5 items. For example, I wanted to make some granola bars with chocolate chips. I picked up a well-known brand and discovered that even though it said "all-natural" on the front of the bag, the ingredients proved otherwise: cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, sugar and soy lecithin. Since soy lecithin is not an actual whole food item and sugar mentioned is probably highly processed, I couldn't purchase this bag of chocolate chips. Fortunately right next to them was a bag that was completely 100% all natural, more expensive, but it fit with the challenge. This challenge forces you to read each and every label. Time consuming, yes. Eye opening, most definitely!

As far as kicking the sugar habit goes, I decided to use this 4-step plan laid out by The Healthy Home Economist. There are a lot of sugars out there and not all of them are bad or addicting, but the one's that are outlined in the plan are the one's you should generally avoid on a daily basis. I am a firm believer that some things are alright in moderation, so don't think that I will never eat a piece of cake again; I just needed to cut these things out for a period of time as a form of detox.

We are five days into this challenge and we are both doing extremely well. Neither one of us has cheated, but don't believe that we haven't been tempted. The things that have surprised me the most during this challenge is that I'm finding that real foods taste better, I'm more excited about cooking each night and for the first time ever I craved a steak instead of M&M's. Fortunately for me, Walter loves a good steak so he didn't hesitate for a second to run to the store to pick some up for dinner.

Alright, enough about diets, sugar monsters and 10-day challenges. This has become my new favorite recipe. I'm going to be so sad when peppers are no longer available from our Farmer's Market. This recipe comes from the dashing dish blog.

Italics are mine

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground turkey (I used grass-fed ground beef)
• 3 red bell peppers (preferably organic)
  
• 2 cups spaghetti sauce (I used my SIL's recipe here, but substituted the spaghetti mix with this recipe)
  
• 1 tsp basil/oregano seasoning (or any blend of italian herbs)
• 1tsp garlic powder (or 1 garlic clove, pressed)
• 1/2 tsp salt/pepper
• 1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach (or veggie of choice),(de-thawed and squeezed dry with paper towel)
• 2 tbs grated (whole milk) parmesan cheese + 6 tbs to garnish over the top of each pepper

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Line baking sheet with foil, (for easy clean up), coat with non-stick cooking spray. (I didn't line my pan with foil to avoid using cooking spray. Obviously there are other things I could use, but I was too lazy) Wash red peppers, and cut around the stem to remove.
2. Remove the stems.
3. Cut peppers in half length-wise, and remove the seeds and ribs inside the peppers. Set peppers on baking pan.
4. Meanwhile, cook ground turkey (or beef) in a large non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Stir and break up the meat while it’s cooking. When meat is almost completely cooked through, add the sauce and seasonings to the pan. Stir and continue to cook until the meat is completely cooked (when it is no longer pink). Add the spinach and parmesan and stir until everything is well combined.
5. Scoop 1/2 cup of the turkey mixture into each pepper.
6. Sprinkle 1 tbs parmesan over each pepper (or another shredded cheese, such as mozzarella).
7. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until cheese is melted, and lightly golden brown.
8. Remove from the oven, let cool, and enjoy!!!

Seriously! These are the yummiest things ever! A must try!