Asian Stuffed Peppers

I've been wanting to do stuffed peppers for a while now but everyone in my house starts complaining as soon as I mention it.  Tonight is my birthday and I can make whatever I want and no one can say a word so I decided to make these peppers.  I'm totally in love with ground turkey with Asian flavors and could eat it all day long so I decided to stuff it with my favorite.  I used baby red bell peppers so I only needed to bake them about 20 minutes until the peppers were really soft and tender.  I imagine using full sized peppers might take a bit longer.  I also opted to not mix my rice into my mixture as I originally planned to do for no reason other than my rice cooker was taking way to long cooking the rice and I didn't feel like waiting on it.  So I served it over brown rice instead.  This was a huge hit with my kids.  My husband of course doesn't care for ground turkey, peppers, onions or brown rice so I didn't expect him to jump up and down over it.  My 2 year old absolutely loved it and ate his entire pepper too before asking for more. 

Filling:
1lb. ground turkey
8 small red bell peppers
1/2 red onion
1/4 c. hoisin sauce
1/3 c. low sodium soy sauce
1/4 c. chili sauce (or any spicy Asian sauce)
1 tsp. olive oil 


Preheat oven to 375.  Chop the onion and 2 of the small bell peppers and add a bit of olive oil to a skillet and saute until just tender. Meanwhile slice the remaining peppers length wise and scoop out inside seeds and flesh to give the meat a place to rest.  Now, add ground turkey to pan with the onions and peppers and cook until not longer pink.  Add in the soy sauce, hoisin sauce and chili sauce and allow to cook a few more minutes.  Now taste to determine if you need salt as I don't add extra because the soy sauce is salty enough.  Place peppers on a non-stick baking sheet (or simply spray baking sheet with pam).  Fill peppers to the top and bake 20 minutes or until tender.  Serve over brown rice.  

Pancake Cups

Peanut Butter Banana Nut Pancake Cups

My kids beg for these almost every morning since the first time I made them.  I originally saw this recipe on pinterest (here - Real Mom Kitchen) and though they don't come out exactly as it says it is a HUGE hit in my house.  The middle sinks in just a bit so it looks like a bowl.  Of course, I modified it to fit what we like a bit better to make it healthier.  I actually love making these because everything goes directly into a blender then poured into a muffin tin so little mess and little clean up.  Plus my kids use almost no syrup this way which I really like.

We've done quite a few variations of this now.  We've done it with peanut butter and bananas.  We've done it with chocolate chips and peanut butter, we've done it with blueberries and lemon zest and we've done it melted jelly or jam over the top as well.  YUM!!!  This makes 24 pancake cups.  If you want just 12, cut the recipe in half.    

Lemon Blueberry Pancake Cups

Peanut Butter Banana Pancake Cups

6 whole eggs
1 c. almond milk
1 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 c. vegan butter melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp. honey

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Add your eggs, milk, flour and vanilla into a blender and let it whirl until smooth.  Add in your butter and honey and again let it whirl.  Pour into a muffin tin (well greased) and fill it a little under half way full.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Allow to cool a few minutes then remove from pan and add your toppings of choice.  I like to add a dollop of peanut butter, sliced bananas and chopped nuts to mine.

 

Whole-Grain Pancake Mix

I'm always so jealous of people that can wake up and make a pancake breakfast for their family out of a box of mix.  It seems so quick, so easy and I've never been one to do that.  I do everything from scratch so of course I spend a great deal of time in the kitchen having to prepare things.  I love the idea of making a huge bag of pancake mix and then just adding in your oil, eggs and milk when it is time to whip them up for breakfast.  It saves so much time on my part and is still just as delicious.  I found this recipe at King Arthur Flour.  I didn't add the oil into the mix like the original recipe called for but opted to add that at the same time as the eggs and milk later on and I opted to make them 100% whole grain and not use the all-purpose flour but add extra whole wheat flour and oats instead and it worked just fine that way.  I liked to write on my bag what I need to add so there is no confusion.  1 cup of the pancake mix + 2 tbsp. oil (such as canola) + 1 egg + 1 c. milk.  This bag makes about 7-8 1 cup servings. 

Pancake Mix 

4 1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
4 c. old fashioned rolled oats

3 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. baking powder
1 tbsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt

Pancakes:

1 c. homemade pancake mix
1 c. almond milk
1 large egg
2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 batch of the pancake mix made as stated above can make about 8 small pancakes.  The nutritional information for them is below.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION - 97.4 Calories * 5.0g Total Fat * .5 Saturated Fat * 1.3 g. Polyunsaturated Fat *  2.4 g. Monounsaturated Fat * 23.1 mg. Cholesterol * 27.5 mg. Sodium * 31.3 mg. Potassium * 11.4 g. Total Carbohydrate * 1.5 g. Dietary Fiber * 2.6 g. Sugar * 2.5 g. Protein