{stuffed} bell peppers

Monday was Labor Day and I was one of the lucky ones who actually got the day off! I wish I could say I relaxed or did something fun, but I spent the entire day studying for finals and working on research for my Philosophy term paper.

The kitchen had been calling my name all day, all I wanted to do was cook or bake something...I didn't have any idea what to make and I didn't really care what it was....I just wanted to do it.  I forced myself to stay away from the kitchen until almost 6pm when I figured that dinner was a logical enough excuse to cook something. :)

I had four green bell peppers that needed to be used and I love {stuffed} bell peppers so I looked around and knew I did not have all the ingredients that I use with the recipe I usually follow so I decided to make it up as I went along.

After cleaning and de-seeding the peppers I put them into a pot of salt water to soften them a little (until the green color gets a little lighter) and while they were soaking I looked around to see what I could use.

I had some leftover ground turkey that I had cooked up a couple days before with some spinach, onion, and green onion so I used that in place of the usual ground beef.

I also would usually use white or brown rice depending on what I had at the time, but the only rice I had was a package of Roasted Chicken flavored instant rice...so it would have to do.

I did have a couple cans of tomato sauce so I put that into a sauce pan on the stove with some more onion, lots of minced garlic, and a little bit of sugar to sweeten it up and weaken the strong taste of tomato.

When I got the sauce to a flavor that I liked I mixed it together with the rice (after heating it up) and the ground turkey mixture.

I ended up with the perfect amount of filling to stuff all four peppers completely, not overflowing but didn't have any extra like I typically would have if I had followed my typical recipe. I topped them with some grated parmesean cheese and cooked them at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

** I didn't care for them as much as the normal recipe I use, but for being thrown together at the spur of the moment they were ok....and if the mister went back for seconds they couldn't have been too bad! ;-) **