{a fabulously thrifty thursday - easy peasy stuffed peppers}

simple, thrifty, and yummy... my kind of meal. i made this for ryan and i last night and it turned out even better than i had hoped. the great thing about this recipe too is that you can customize it to your favorite ingredient.

[image via womans day]

so obviously you'll need some peppers! i used red, green and yellow... but we liked the red and yellow best
for the filling i used:
lean ground beef (you could sub in any type of meat)
1 can of drained pinto beans (or you could use black beans)
half of an onion
3 garlic cloves
cumin and pepper to taste (because i just really hate measuring... actually, i hate washing the measuring spoons)

so you can see how you can throw in pretty much any ingredients here. i'd definitely toss some rice in there next time to mix it up:)

brown your meat, add in the garlic and onion and cook until onion is a little soft, then mix in the rest of your ingredients to combine
cut the tops off of each pepper (or half em like the picture above), remove seeds, then use a spoon to clean them out
fill each pepper to the top with your filling and place them in a baking dish. i used a small square dish and fit about 5 peppers. make sure to fill the dish so that the peppers stay upright while cooking.
cover your dish with foil and pop in the oven for 40 minutes... once cooked, pull out of the oven and sprinkle a little cheese on top. place them bake in the oven for another 10 minutes.
voila, a yummy dinner in under an hour... for about 10 bucks

tip: if you end up with extra and save for lunch the next day, don't put it in a tupperware and try and eat it with a plastic fork... it's impossible (trust me). this meal is better left on a plate with a metal fork and knife:)
enjoy!

{xo, l}