Stuffed peppers, stuffed me....

For all of you who, like me, are devoted listeners to Martha Stewart Radio this blog post is my tribute to Sandy Gluck.  Sandy has a feature every Wednesday called "Use it up," where callers call in with questions like "I have half a can of coconut milk in my fridge, how can..." use it up.

Well, I have fallen a bit off the cooking wagon these past few weeks.  As many of you (all 5 of you) may have noticed, this blog has been on a hiatus.  My life has been a little crazy and I lost my cooking mojo.  As a result, my fridge runneth over with fruits and vegetables.  However, none of them fit nicely into any specific recipe.  So with the basic premise of making a dinnner using as many vegetables as possible, dinner began.

The result was stuffed peppers with yellow rice and roasted butternut squash - a healthy, low calorie, high fiber dinner that was bursting with color.  Just the meal I needed in the drab of winter.

2 red bell peppers provided my starting point.  The stuffing consisted of 1 cup cooked chickpeas, 4 portabello mushrooms, 1/2 yellow onion (chopped), 1/2 jalepeno (diced), 4 cherry tomatoes (because they were left over and I needed to use them), paprika, cumin, salt and pepper.  I sweated the mushrooms and onions, added the jalepeno, chickpeas and tomatoes, season and simmered until the mushrooms and onions were cooked down.  I then stuffed the mixture into the halved bell peppers and topped with Daiya cheese.  I put a little broth in the bottom of the casserole dish, tented with foil and baked at 450 for about 20 minutes.

On the side was yellow rice from Viva Vegan, and then I roasted a butternut squash. Voila.  All this can be yours for just 347 calories!