Part of the food challenge involves us using ingredients that we have on hand, and it can be a challenge at times to find combinations that work. Stuffed peppers & collard greens? Really?
This was a full day of new recipes for us with the black bean veggie burgers for lunch and the lemon yogurt cake for dessert, but we trudged through and tried these two recipes together for dinner. The reality was that the combination of stuffed peppers and collard greens wasn’t a bad one at all.
Please excuse the terribly out of focus photo but by this time it was nearly 9pm. We were starving and had a movie and that lemon cake taunting us.
(13) Stuffed Peppers
see link for recipe source
Nothing says “I’m a child of the 70s” like stuffed peppers. I’ve had my own recipe for making them for years but when we saw some nice bell peppers at the grocery store we decided to give it a go for the challenge. The About.com recipe I found was straight forward and the ingredients seemed promising enough, especially the sauce.
About 20 minutes in we remembered why people don’t make stuffed peppers all that often anymore. They take forever. An hour and a half to make just two peppers for dinner is a time investment that we would not have done under normal circumstances. Thankfully though, we are not normal and we had the night free.
Verdict: The sauce gets an A+, though it would be even more flavorful had we been able to use fresh ingredients instead of canned. Overall, the recipe gets an “OK” from me but I would probably go back to my own recipe when I decide to make stuffed peppers again.
(14) Kickin’ Collard Greens
see link for recipe source
The last of our Georgia collards were recently harvested and we wanted to say goodbye to this year’s crop by including it in the food challenge. Because this recipe included bacon, we had high hopes indeed.
Verdict: In the end this recipe fell short for us. The flavors were all present but somehow they didn’t come together like they should have to achieve the hearty taste that you would expect from the name of the recipe. We won’t be trying this recipe again.
While neither of these challenge recipes were real winners in our book, it is important to note that we were in no way dissatisfied with our meal. The prep and cooking time was long today, but we have to measure that as time well spent because not only did we prepare food at home from scratch, we did it together and sharing even an imperfect experience with someone you love can make things a lot better.
Tagged as: challenge, food, ground beef, peppers, recipes, tomatoes
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