stuffed green peppers.

One day, I had the burning desire to make stuffed green peppers. This is weird because I've never made them before, and I honestly don't remember the last time I had a stuffed pepper. Regardless, turned to Google and did a search, to happy results. The following recipe was found on allrecipes.com.


the recipe
serves 4
1 cup water
1/2 cup uncooked Arborio rice
2 green bell peppers, halved and seeded
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch ground black pepper
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese


1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a baking sheet.
2. In a medium saucepan, bring water to a boil. Stir in the rice. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat, and seat aside.
3. Place the peppers cut-side down on the prepared baking sheet. Roast 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until tender and skin starts to brown.
4. While the peppers are roasting, heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the onions, basil, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper in oil for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the tomato, and cook for 5 minutes. Spoon in the cooked rice, and stir until heated through. Remove from heat, mix in the feta cheese, and spoon the mixture into the pepper halves.
5. Return to the oven for 5 minutes. Serve immediately.


substitutions
Brown rice instead of Arborio rice, spring onions instead of green onions, dry Italian dressing powder for the Italian seasoning, and no tomato.


great with
I thought at first that this was going to be filling enough to have on it's own, but the peppers I got were pretty small, so I quickly realized that wasn't going to work. I had one stuffed pepper half with a Morningstar Farms chicken pattie.


the review
Regardless of the fact that my picture of the pepper doesn't necessarily make the pepper look very pretty, you really must believe me when I say that these were very good. Very flavorful and for the most part, healthy. I like this recipe because I think there are a lot of different things that you could do with the rice mixture, depending on what your tastes are. I certainly changed it from the originally recipe, and it was great. I've already bought another pepper, so I'm looking forward to having these again.

roasted tomato feta scones.

I spend a lot of time on a website called Etsy, which allows seller to sell their handmade and vintage goods online. It's a fun site and I've enjoyed selling some of my handmade cards over the last few months. Anyways, the website also posts articles, which I honestly don't usually read because a lot of them are weird or pointless, but when I saw the picture of these scones, I had to click on the article. The recipe for these savory scones is from the blog Savory Sweet Life, which you should also check out. There are some good-looking recipes on there. It's not exclusively vegetarian, but there are several veggie-friendly recipes, and many that I think would not be difficult to substitute ingredients.

the recipe

Makes 8 scones

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

4 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

3/4 cup heavy cream

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 4 oz package feta cheese

1/2 cup roasted red tomatoes, chopped

2 green onions, finely sliced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place the flour, baking powder, garlic salt and butter in a food processor. Pulsate everything in 3-second intervals until the mixture resembles coarse meal. If doing this by hand, use 2 knives, a pastry blender or your fingers.

Transfer everything to a large bowl. Stir in heavy cream and egg, mixing the dough by hand until it comes together. Add feta cheese, roasted tomatoes, and green onions. Gently mix the ingredients by hand until the savory ingredients are evenly distributed. On a floured surface, form a big dough ball. Flatten the dough in a 1 inch disk and cut it into 8 equal pieces. Bake for 15 on a baking stone or a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Remove scones from baking sheet and cool on a wire rack.

substitutions

First of all, I cut this recipe in half because I knew it would take me ages to finish off an entire recipe of these things myself. Additionally, I didn't have the roasted tomatoes, so I just seeded some regular tomatoes and used that instead. I also didn't have green onions, which is a shame, because I think it really adds some of the color to it. I just used some sweet onions instead, for flavor.

great with

Considering that you could eat these for pretty much any meal, your options are wide open. I had two for dinner, accompanied by a salad. I also brought one to work for lunch, along with an apple and some greek yogurt. 

the review

Let's first take a moment to marvel at how much mine do not look like the picture featured with the original recipe. Seriously, how hilarious is that? No matter--these were still really good. Mine definitely do not look as pretty, and I'm thinking that had something to do with not having exactly the right ingredients. Like I indicated before, I think the green onions and the dark red of the roasted tomatoes would really make a nice color combination in food. Honestly though, even with the substitutions, I thought these were really good and I enjoyed both making and eating them. I think next time, I'm going to use green onions, and possibly sun-dried tomatoes. I don't know, I just think that sounds really good.

greek cheese and potato patties

About two weeks ago, I was preparing to donate blood for the first time. I was nervous, so I was just trying to do everything that I was told--drink lots of water, eat a hearty breakfast the day of, and intake lots of iron in the days leading up to the donation. I do the first two on most days anyways, so I began focusing on the third one, especially since I know vegetarians can sometimes have difficulty keeping their iron levels up. Every day the week before I donated blood, I made sure I ate something that contained spinach. 

Therefore, when I found the following recipe, another one from The Best-Ever Vegetarian Cookbook, I decided to add spinach and see what happened. 

the recipe

serves 4

1 1/4 lb potatoes

4 oz feta cheese

4 spring onions, chopped

3 tbsp chopped fresh dill

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 egg, beaten

flour for dredging

3 tbsp olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Boil the potatoes in their skins in lightly salted water until soft. Drain, then peel while still warm. Place in a bowl and mash. Crumble the feta cheese into the potatoes and add the spring onions, dill, lemon juice and egg. Season with salt and pepper (the cheese is salty, so taste before you add salt). Stir well.

2. Cover the mixture and chill until firm. Divide the mixture into walnut-size balls, then flatten them slightly. Dredge with the flour. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the patties until golden brown on each side. Drain on kitchen paper and serve at once.

substitutions

Honestly, I'm not even sure where to begin. I only had one potato, so that made things interesting right from the beginning. I added spinach--not sure exactly how much, I just broke off part of a block of frozen spinach. Since I didn't have enough potatoes, I added a little bit of flour to help with the consistency, since I was noticed that mine was clearly too runny. And I know this is going to sound ridiculous--probably because it really is ridiculous--but my family has a strange vendetta against dill that's a little hard to explain. Anyways, I ditched that particular seasoning and went with some oregano and pepper instead. As you can tell, there was a certain point where I just started ignoring the cookbook and basically started doing whatever I wanted.

great with

If I'm remembering correctly, I had some of this with a Morningstar Farms Chicken Pattie one night. I had the leftovers another night with just a salad. Both dinners were good.

the review

So this is one of those recipes that, once I got into it and realized just how much of the recipe I was not following, I was sure it was going to taste awful once I was done. I was surprised. These didn't taste awful. In fact, they tasted pretty good. I really liked being able to taste the lemon juice, although it was subtle. I also usually love anything with feta in it. Overall, the taste reminded me of something that I've had before, but can't quite place. Perhaps a spinach souffle (but only because I added spinach--I have no idea what it would taste like otherwise). Anyways, I look forward to making these again, hopefully with a little less stress.

And maybe I'll get over that thing with the dill. We'll see.