A weekend in review: Stuffed pepper virgins, big spenders,big talkers and the naughtiest book I've ever seen at the library!

Stuffed Pepper Virgins (read this while hearing Madonna's Like a Virgin playing in the back of your mind). Yep that's what we were until yesterday. The last time I had them, Brian's mom made them and brought four up to us and before I knew it three of them had mysterious disappeared...IN BRIAN'S BELLY! lol

Brian and I were both hungry for them but neither of us had made them before.  We went to the store armed with a list and a mission.  We got all of the ingredients, came home and started to cook!  My review... we did a'ight but they always say a mother's food tastes better because it's made with love and I sure do believe it!  We cooked them for over an hour and a half and I can honestly say although the taste was pretty good the texture was WAY better with Brian's mom's! I spoke with her today and she suggested that we either boil them a little before we bake them or we bake them at a reduced temp (325 versus 350) for up to three hours.  Any suggestions for the next time would also be welcomed and appreciated!  I'll insert a picture for you... don't judge they aren't very pretty gals to begin with and due to fat kid syndrome, I only had bad lighting and an iphone to work with since my hunger and laziness dominated the fact that I didn't feel like finding the regular camera to take a better picture!



For those of your interested in what we used, I am posting the recipe below...

Stuffed Peppers -  4 bell Peppers - We used yellow, green, orange and red.  (stems cut off and insides cleaned out)
1 lb ground beef (we used 80/20) 1 Cup cooked rice
1 tsp onion powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 tsp minced garlic 1 egg 1/4 cup of bread crumbs (we used Italian style) 1 29 oz can of tomato sauce

We boiled and fully cooked the rice, we then mixed 1 Cup of cooked rice with the pound of meat (some recipes said to brown it first but we didn't because we're rebels like that! he he), next we mixed the onion powder, salt, egg, minced garlic and bread crumbs together.  After mixing all ingredients thoroughly, we stuffed each pepper to the top.  We covered a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a 13x9 baking dish and added the peppers,  We poured the remaining sauce over each pepper.  We covered with foil and baked them for an hour and a half (setting a timer and basting the sauce back over each pepper half way through cooking).  During the final 15 min of baking I added a small amount of mozzarella cheese to the top of each pepper.  We baked it for a total of an hour and a half at 350.

While our peppers were baking we put the rest of our groceries away.  I know that I myself like to stalk other peoples "grocery hauls" so I thought I'd end your curiosity about ours (oh c'mon don't act like you didn't want to know) and allow you to see what our small shopping trip consisted of..... We got stuff to make smoothies, the stuffed pepper ingredients, lunchables for the kids, more lean cuisines, snacks, ingredients to make chex mix, pancakes, and the best deal of the day... first we got the most AMAZING Greek yogurt with fruit (Brian and I LOVE testers at Sam's Club and Walmart) and they did NOT disappoint today!  They not only hooked us up with multiple samples, but provided us with coupons so that we could get 2 of the Muller Greek yogurts for $1.08! Next up for deal of the day were pork loins to make pulled pork sandwiches (with a side of coleslaw) they were normally $11 and $12 and with the sale and coupons that we found on two of them we ended up getting BOTH for $9!  We planned on making this for dinner today but instead the "big talkers" had a healthy meal of this..... Puh-lease people... tell me you haven't done this before! lol  It's been a really rough day and after you read Brian's post tomorrow you'll understand the need for comfort junk food!

Here is where the big spenders come in.... this was our biggest purchase yesterday.... Both Brian's laptop and mine are totally hanging on for dear life.  I think its a result of Beckett and Auden downloading anything that looks cool off of the internet. We decided we both need a computer that is more reliable than one that produces a warning basically telling us that we're darn lucky it hasn't crashed yet.  So as a result say hello to our new computers!

Lastly we stopped at the local library this weekend.  It was the first time that Brian was there.  As I showed him around, I took him upstairs to the children's section and we discussed bringing the kids here once a week for books. As we went to leave we couldn't believe our eyes!  THIS is what we saw! Do you see what we see?  How did they miss this?!?! What a naughty little book!  It makes me giggle every time I see it and I swear I can hear a mean raspy voice saying "you effing kids better remember to return your library books mother$*&!'ssssssss!" Then again I'm not sure what I expected from a library who's wall plague reads "Quench your THURST for knowledge" I sure hope they got a discount on that plaque for lack of spell check abilities!

Here's hoping your weekend was as fun and eventful as ours was!  Stacy