Stockpile Meals: Stuffed Green Peppers

As great as couponing is, it comes with its challenges. Most coupons available are for heavily processed, high-sodium, high-carb foods. When planning meals, I have to be extremely creative so as to not revolve our diets around foods that are not healthy for us. Don't get me wrong; I'm anything but a health nut. I just like to watch what we eat, in what quantities, and balance it out. After all, the key to life is balance in every aspect, right?

Then again, it's so nice to always have everything you need on-hand, and in large quantities. Before I started couponing, my grocery bills were pretty high because I would buy everything as I needed it. I would purchase the item whether it was on sale or not. Couponing Leah pays attention to sales and buys items only at their lowest price. Stockpile meals do not necessitate me to make another trip to the store for just one or two items to complete my meal. Stockpile meals are when I use items in my stockpile to make something yummy and delicious, without needing to take an extra trip. Trust me, the time spent couponing is nothing compared to the time (and money!) spent going to the store 4 days a week!

Once upon a time, my parents, as with the rest of the nation, participated in the Atkins diet. Anyone else remember that? It was all about high-protein and low-carb. I was a teenager in cross country and I will admit that I hated this diet. There was, however, one dish I absolutely loved: Stuffed Green Peppers. I don't remember the specifics of how my mom made it (I could probably find an Atkins recipe book and look it up, if I was so inclined), but I remember it being my favorite dish of the Atkins diet.

While couponing, I stumbled across a great deal on green peppers--$0.44 each! For this area and for this time of year, that's an outstanding deal! I snatched up four of them. After doing so, Matt (who is an extremely picky eater, by the way) reminded me that he doesn't like peppers. I told him I'd make a dish where the pepper was somewhat optional to eat.

Flash forward to today's dinner: Stuffed Green Peppers. I made this meal solely from our stockpile of food we have! Although I didn't follow a recipe, I'll give you directions to make your own yummy stuffed green peppers!

You'll need:
1-1.5 lbs ground beef/turkey
2 cans condensed tomato soup
4-6 green peppers
1/2 onion, diced
1 cup rice
minced garlic
shredded cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2. Cook 1 cup rice. We used "Gold" long grain rice, but I know my mom used Minute Rice. I don't think it matters too much.

 

 

 

If you don't have a rice cooker, I highly recommend
getting one!

3. While rice is cooking, cut tops off green peppers. This is super quick and easy to do:

4. Brown ground beef, onions, and garlic. Matt doesn't like onions (picky, picky!), so I cooked them separately:

5. When rice is finished cooking, dump into ground beef-onion-garlic mixture. Add 2 cans tomato soup:

Yum yum! Almost done!

6. Scoop mixture into green peppers:

7. Top with cheese:

8. Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until green peppers are soft:

I did have a fair amount of the meat mixture left over. I could realistically have made at least 2 more stuffed peppers. The mixture is delicious on it's own, though, and I'll be eating my leftover meat mixture for lunch this week!

Enjoy!

This is a very flexible, yummy recipe. I had all ingredients at home, which was super nice. Yay for stockpile meals! :)