Easy Stuffed Peppers

Hello, friends!   The only downfall to a 3 day weekend has gotta be getting your bum out of bed on Tuesday morning.  I had all intentions of working out this morning, but the snooze won, yet again.

Speaking of work outs, my 30 day shred workouts have been going pretty well.  With last week being pretty busy, I didn’t make time to squeeze it in.  I know, excuses, excuses.  Overall, I’ve been much better with getting in my workouts which was the overall goal.  Let’s just say, my body hasn’t been this sore in some time.

In attempts to save time during the week, Mondays (my new regular day off) have turned into cooking days. I crank up the music on my Pandora and get cooking away.

As I had mentioned the other day, after looking through some saved recipes, I found a recipe for stuffed peppers that I just knew I had to make.  I love all different types of filling you can use for stuffing peppers.

I used the recipe from Tosca Reno’s book called Eat Clean Cookbook as a guideline, but switched some things around based on the produce I had at home.

Stuffed Peppers (adapted from Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Cookbook)

• Water
• Sea salt
• 4 large bell peppers (remove top, ribs, and seeds)
• 2 cups cooked brown rice
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup mushrooms (chopped)
• 3 cloves garlic (chopped)
• 2 cups fresh Roma tomatoes
• 1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 15 oz. can corn, rinsed and drained
• 1 tablespoon dried cilantro (recommend fresh, but didn’t have on hand)
• Juice of one lime
• Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place cooked brown rice in bowl and let cool. Set aside.

- Bring large pot of water to boil. Place peppers in bowling water and cook briefly until softened. Take out of pot and place on paper towel to drain.

- In large skillet, heat olive oil and sauté mushrooms. Cook for 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook for a few more minutes.

- Add tomatoes, corn, and beans. Cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

- Add vegetable mixture to cooled, cooked brown rice. Season with cilantro, lime juice, sea salt, and pepper.

- Mix until ingredients are evenly distributed. Set aside.

- Place peppers on baking dish. Stuff each pepper with filling. Make sure not to pack too tightly.

- Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and serve.

This recipe, although somewhat time consuming, used such simple ingredients.  Depending on the season, you can easily swap out produce similar to what I did.

Delicious, light, and packed with flavor.

Other Swanky Scoop:

The folks over at Dannon sent me some coupons to sample their Oikos Greek yogurt.  I jumped at the chance to try it out!  Way back when, I did sample the caramel flavor which tasted heavenly.

The grocery store I went to didn’t have the best variety, so I picked out the vanilla and plain flavors for now.

I love Greek yogurt not only for the taste, but the higher protein content. This variety is packed with 12 grams!

I really enjoyed the vanilla flavor. It had a nice creaminess to it with a slight hint of vanilla. I topped mine with strawberries.

The only thing that I noticed missing were live active cultures (aka: probiotics) that help to maintain the health of our intestinal tract and aid in digestion that are found in most Greek yogurts.

Thanks to Dannon for the free samples!

What are your favorite stuffed pepper fillers? Have you tried Oikos Greek yogurt?

Tagged as: dannon, oikos greek yogurt, recipe, stuffed peppers, Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet