Vegetable and Ricotta Stuffed Pepper Boats

Cheap Eat Challenge, Part 2: Watch as our family of 6 eats on less than $10/day.

Until a few years ago, I just couldn't stand peppers. At all.  They were one of the few vegetables that just didn't work for me. I tried to love them. After all, they were so very very pretty. I'd try them every year or so when I saw some lovely slices on someone's vegetable tray. And every year I thought, "Nope, still not working for me." It got to the point where I thought they were destined to be picked off of my supreme pizzas forever. And then one summer, it happened. We were at a friend's house, she had a plate of red, yellow, and green pepper slices. I was starving. I pulled off a red, gave it a bit of dip. It was sweet--sweeter than I remembered. I had another and another. I tried a yellow. Soon enough I was porking out on them dip-free and I was eager to get more. I started buying them after that--just occasionally when I was in the mood. And then, one day, they made their way into my garden. There's no going back after that. It's too much work not to love them. (I'm feeling a marriage analogy coming on, but I'll try to limit my marriage analogies to my discussions involving brownies, and maybe cookies.)

I still love the reds best. And although the greens and I have made peace, we're still not, like, BFF. Not this year at least.

This summer I've been using my lunches to try to work my way through some of summer's bounties. In the midst of eating my way through a large zucchini and more than a windowsill full of garden tomatoes, my friend gave me some of the prettiest banana peppers ever--some were still pale, some had turned orange, and some were red enough for party lipstick. Would that we all aged as well as peppers do.

So I made stuffed peppers. Only these couldn't possibly stand upright, so I laid them down and made pepper boats. I know; I know; I'm completely brilliant. I just can't help myself sometimes.

Seriously, though, there are several advantages to the banana boats as opposed to the average stuffed pepper:

1) They take less time in the oven because they're skinnier.
2) They're less messy to cut up and eat.
3) When you sprinkle cheese on the top, you have more surface area for more cheese. I ask you, do you need more reason than this? I don't.

Vegetable and Ricotta Stuffed Pepper Boats
Makes 4
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Cost: Guys I'm struggling here as most of my vegetables have been free, so this is a bit of a guess: $1.57
(zucchini: .15, tomato: .35, onion: .02, peppers: no idea really; I've honestly never purchased them; let's say: .40, ricotta: .50, feta: ..15)

Note: One of the great things about stuffed peppers is that you can substitute whatever you have. (In fact, I kept mis-typing this to read 'stuff peppers' which can be uncannily accurate.) You can use whatever fresh veggies you've got. You can sub cottage cheese for the ricotta. You can sprinkle it with any cheese that milks your cow (although I like something with some punch like sharp cheddar, Parmesan/Romano/Asiago, or feta). You can use couscous, rice, or quinoa in place of some or all of the ricotta. You can add bacon or sausage or ground beef if you wish to de-vegetarian this. Bread crumbs, sure. Paprika on top, why not? Hot peppers instead of banana; you're brave, but go for it. And, yes, you can even use just a regular old bell pepper. The point is that, if you like peppers, these babies are tough to mess up. They're even tough to uglify. Who doesn't love that in a food?

Another Note: I prepare the filling and just make one pepper at a time for lunch. So I make my pepper and then I put the leftover filling in the fridge so I can use it the next day to stuff another pepper for lunch.

One final note: While I'm preparing the filling I like to throw the (de-stemmed, de-seeded) pepper I'm going to use into the oven while the oven heats and while I prepare the filling on the stove. This way it cooks a bit before I put the fillings in and the whole thing cooks a bit faster.

Okay, this is really really the final note: It is possible you could skip sauteing the vegetables and just mix everything up, stuff the pepper, and then cook it a little longer in the oven. I think it goes faster with the stove to oven method, but if you've got plenty of wait time for things to cook and less hands-on time to be standing at a stove, this might be a great option for you. I've got to warn you, though, that I haven't tried it. If you do and it works as well as I think it would, let me know, would you?

4 banana or other long peppers
1/2 C diced zucchini
1/8-1/4 C sliced onion
1 tomato, diced
1 C ricotta cheese
2 Tbsp feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Lay your peppers down and cut a generous sliver our of the side facing up. (Leave the stem in tact so your filling doesn't leak out.) Cut out the seeds and any ribs that are in your way.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a frying pan. Add zucchini and onion to hot oil and saute until the onions are clear and tender. Add tomatoes and salt and pepper. Cook another minute more until tomatoes are warm.

Put this vegetable mixture into a bowl. Add ricotta. Taste and adjust your seasonings. Stuff the peppers and sprinkle with feta cheese.

Bake in oven at 400 for 10-15 minutes.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Vegetarian Fajitas

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch us as we try really really hard to eat with our family of 6 on $6/day.

Recently I was very justly accused of not including enough vegetable recipes on this site. My friend pointed out that this site is a little heavy on the bread, cake, chocolate spectrum. Um, guilty as charged. 

It's not that I dislike vegetables. In fact, I love vegetables. I love them so much that I most often eat them just plain and raw. Which doesn't provide too awfully much fodder for a food blog. The other problem is that I didn't grow up eating a lot of vegetables. As a child/young adult, I ate green beans from a can, corn from a can, frozen broccoli/cauliflower (which still turns my stomach a bit to think about), raw carrots, iceberg lettuce, corn, potatoes, tomatoes/tomato sauces. It wasn't until I was married or nearly married that I ever tried artichokes, avocados, asparasgus, squash in their various varieties (not counting zucchini bread, which I've always eaten and loved--shocker), varieties of onion, kale, sweet potato (not counting Thanksgiving sugary sweet potatoes), parsnips, beets, baby spinach, and about 100 other vegetables. I didn't know how to prepare fresh green beans when I grew them in my garden (steamed or sauted thank you very much, and then served with a pat of butter and salt and pepper). The point being that most of the vegetable recipes that I now have and love are straight up from other sources. I'm going to try to link more to them when we eat or I find them.

By the way, I'd like the record to clearly show that I do NOT blame my mother. I'm sure that there wasn't as much variety in the grocery stores in the small town of my youth. And, even more than that, now that I'm a mother, I'm quite sure that my four other brothers and sisters and I, must have done our best to whine away any vegetable adventurousness our poor mother ever had. Also, cooked vegetables like butter (or at least a bit of olive oil), and our family didn't do butter (or olive oil). Did any families of the '80s and '90s do butter or olive oil? Did yours? Seriously, I'd like to know.

Now, in addition to adding more veggie links and dishes to this blog, I'm making another change (Don't worry, we'll still do plenty of sweets. That's right, I read the stats to this blog; I know that the most popular posts are almost always the sweet ones. It's okay, all your little secrets are safe with me.) Anyway, what was the point before I distracted myself? Oh, yes, in Jean's Food Journal, I'll also be recording how many cups of fruits/vegetables the kids and I consume each day. Besides letting you know how we're doing, having to record it will pressure me to do well and to try to get my kids to do well. Win win.

Now for today's veggie-full recipe. I love it.

Vegetarian Fajitas
Serves 2
Prep time: 3 minutes
Cook time: 10-15 minutes
Cost: .80
(pepper: .50, onion: .20, spices/sauces: .10)

1 large bell pepper (any color will do, but reds are my favorite and the prettiest)
1 small onion
1 T olive oil
1 clove garlic
1/2 T cider vinegar (or you can sub the plain distilled kind or probably anything you've got)
scant 1 T Worcheshire sauce
scant 1 T soy sauce
dash chili powder
1 small handful peanuts, probably about 3 Tbsp (preferrably raw; if not, go for something unsalted; you're getting plenty of salt in this meal)

Combine garlic, vinegar, Worcheshire, soy sauce, and chili powder in a bowl.

Chop vegetables and throw them in the bowl. You can marinate it for 20 minutes or so, but don't need to. (If you plan to leave them to marinate, you may want to reduce the amounts of vinegar, Worcheshire and soy to 1/2 T. However, I'm always making this for lunch and in a hurry, so I just throw it all into the pan without marinating for long.)

Heat oil in 10 or 12-inch skillet over medium or medium high heat (you don't want the veggies to scorch as soon as they hit the pan, but you don't want them to sit there for 20 minutes without getting any color either). Throw veggies and sauce in. Stir occasionally, letting vegetables suck up sauces and sort of carmalize with the oil a bit.

When nearly done, throw in the peanuts if using. I did this once on a whim and really liked it.

When the vegetables are tender and browned (from both sauce and heat), take them off and serve with tortillas or naan or rotti or whatever flat bread shivers your timbers. It would also do well served over rice. Or you can just eat it with a fork.

PRINTABLE RECIPE