Stuffed Peppers

These sweet peppers are stuffed with corn, black beans, tomatoes, quinoa, and chicken.  It's clean eating at it's finest!

Sorry I've been MIA lately.  The past few weeks my blog has been put on the back burner because of life.  Yes, life happens and some things just need to take priority.  You all know how it is...

First off, I've been eating only clean foods, so I haven't been baking at all.  I make a large batch of a meal and then eat it through out the week.  There hasn't been a ton of variety because I'm still learning about all this clean eating.  It's a journey well worth it though!  I have lots of ideas and new recipes to share with you soon!

Secondly, it's summertime and I'd much rather be outside enjoying the gorgeous weather we've been waiting months for than spending time in the kitchen or on my computer.  We recently got a swing and a baby pool for Summer and she loves to be outside!  She also just got a picnic table, slide, and sandbox for her birthday (more on that in a minute), so lots of time outdoors is in our future.

And third, we had Summer's first birthday party on Saturday.  She won't be one for a couple more weeks but since we'll be camping over her birthday and my Grandma was visiting from Canada this week, we decided to have an early celebration.  I spent a lot of time preparing for her party and I'm pleased to say it went beautifully!

Anyway, on to the food.  The Stuffed Peppers are one of my new favorite foods.  I always thought that I didn't like peppers and so I always picked them out of my food and I never cooked with them.  Then a few weeks ago we had Kabobs at a friends house and they used red and yellow peppers.  I really enjoyed them and so I was motivated to pick up a few sweet peppers at the store.  Honestly, they sat in my crisper for a couple weeks because I got nervous that I wouldn't end up liking them as stuffed peppers.  I'm glad I decided to try anyway because like I said, these are one of my new favorite foods!  Plus, they are 21 Day Fix friendly!

The filling is super simple and customizable.  I used diced chicken, quinoa, corn, black beans and tomatoes.  Combine the filling ingredients and then place the mixture in a hollowed out half of a pepper.  Warm them in the oven and you have a delicious and filling dinner!  This made more filling than I had peppers for, so I have also used the filling as a salad topping and inside a corn tortilla.  The peppers reheat well and made perfectly portioned lunches for me to take to work!

Stuffed Peppers

Serves 8

Ingredients:
1 large chicken breast
1 cup quinoa
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 bag frozen corn
1 can diced tomatoes
2 Tablespoons Cajun seasoning
4 red, yellow, or orange peppers

1.  Dice up chicken breast and cook in a frying pan.

2.  Cook quinoa according to package directions.

3.  Mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, tomatoes, and Cajun seasoning together.  You can also mix the chicken in if you want, I put mine on top of the filling because I needed to measure it separately.

4.  Wash peppers, cut them in half, and remove the seeds and white membranes.

5.  Place peppers, cut side up, on a baking sheet.  Fill with the quinoa and vegetable mixture.  Top with chicken if you haven't already added it in.

6.  Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, until heated through and the peppers are soft.

Serve hot.  Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.

If you're doing the 21 Day Fix, fill a yellow container with the filling and place it in a pepper.  Measure the chicken in your red container and place on top of the filling.  This meal is 2 greens, 1 yellow and 1 red.