Pinterest Recipe: Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers

I got my wisdom teeth and a baby tooth pulled today, so I've been home from work and confined to the couch all day. That has actually been good in that I have been able to catching up on blogging. I had 5 posts that I started in the past couple months and never finished, so I'm going back and posting them all now.

I found this recipe on Pinterest last summer and have made several times in the past few months. It's fairly healthy, really yummy, and not too difficult. Hope you're able to make it sometime and enjoy it with your family. Or, better yet, come over and I'll make it for you :)

Ingredients: 

Olive Oil

4-6 Bell Peppers, Halved and Seeds Removed

1 lb Ground Turkey

1 Cup Chopped Onions

2 Tbsp Taco Seasoning (Homemade is best!)

1 Can Black Beans, Drained and Rinsed

1 Cup Frozen Corn

2 Cups Cooked Quinoa and/or Rice
1-2 Cups Salsa

Shredded Mexican Blend Cheese

Cilantro

Sour Cream

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly coat the peppers with olive oil and roast in a baking dish about 20-25 minutes just until cooked thru. Remove the peppers from the oven and allow to cool until you can handle them.

While peppers are roasting, cook the ground turkey and, after draining the turkey, sauté the onions with the meat. Add the taco seasoning, black beans, corn and rice (we use this rice/quinoa blend from Costco) to the skillet. Add in the salsa and mix well.

Carefully spoon the turkey mixture into each half of the bell peppers and place back into the baking dish. Cook the peppers for another 15-20 minutes or until the peppers are cooked all the way thru. Before removing from the oven, sprinkle the tops of each pepper with shredded cheese. 

When the cheese is completely melted (just a couple minutes later), remove from the oven and top with fresh cilantro and sour cream and serve. I usually have some "filling" left over and use this to make yummy burritos the next day. You could, of course, just make more bell peppers, if you prefer. 

One more note: Last time I made this recipe, I didn't have any salsa, so I added diced green chiles instead (including the juice). It turned out really well and I would highly recommend it if you're a green chile fan like I am. 

Christmas 2012

We had a really fun and relaxing Christmas this year! Though it would have been great to spend the day with family, we still had a wonderful holiday and a great day off work. (I'm aware this is super detailed, but I love going back and reading these blogs to remember special events, so you'll have to bare with me through some of the mundane details...or not, you can skip to the pictures if you'd like.)

Sunday, we FaceTimed with Kory's family and got to see almost all of them together in Amarillo. It was especially fun to see Lucy in action and hear her giggle, since we mostly just see pictures of her. 

I worked all day Monday, and Kory spent his day working at our four Christmas Eve services at church. When I got off work, I went to church to help with the Children's Ministry at the 6:00 service and then attended the 8:00 service with our besties, Jeremy & Abby, and their families. 

After the last service, we headed home to begin Christmas festivities. Kory skipped and sang out of the church building...the man LOVES Christmas, probably more than I do, which is saying a LOT. We went home and opened our traditional Christmas eve pajamas and then decided to open another gift, just because we could! These are the benefits of being adults and getting to make your own rules for Christmas, without having to consult other family members :) 

With our Christmas pj's on, we settled in for the first viewing of A Christmas Story. Kory is crazy about that movie and I think we watched it a total of 5 times over that 24 hour period. I enjoy it, but mostly because it's fun to watch it with him. He can pretty much quote all of it, repeatedly says this next part is his favorite part in the whole movie and will start cracking up in anticipation of what will happen next.

We went to bed fairly early, but it turns out that only one of us really slept that night. Part of Kory really loving Christmas means that he can't sleep the night before...just like a little kid. He tried so hard this year, but ended up only getting about 3 hours of sleep that night I think. He waited as long as he could before waking me up to start opening presents, which I think was about 7:30 or so.

It was raining really hard outside and the sun hadn't really come out yet, so we started a fire in the fireplace and opened our stockings and gifts. 

We discovered this year that it's really hard to keep gifts a secret when you're married, but it's also really fun to receive gifts from a spouse because they know you SO well and can get you gifts you didn't even know you needed or wanted. 

One of my favorite stocking presents was a book written by the founder of TOMS shoe company, Blake Mycoskie. It's called Start Something That Matters and tells the TOMS story from the beginning, but also shares ideas and inspiration for how to live a life of making a difference in your world. After opening all our gifts, I decided to read a few pages of my book. I ended up falling asleep reading my book and took a morning nap. I must say, any day where I get to take a nap (and stay in my pajamas until lunch time) is sure to be one of my favorite days. 

Sky got a rubber tire chew toy from Santa, but he obviously got confused and thought it was his Christmas dinner :) 

Kory also decided to take a nap since hadn't really slept much the night before, so I read my book and caught up on my DVR'd shows that he doesn't like to watch with me. About 1:00, we finally decided to get up and around and get dressed for the day.

We went to join several families from our church for the rest of the day. They are a group of people who don't have family in Oregon and call themselves "The Orphans" :) It's great to have friends who understand our situation and welcome us like family for the holidays. We played several games and ate dinner together and then tried to go see Les Miserables, but it was sold out, so we returned to the Burmeister's house to watch movies instead. 

When we got home that night, we were able to FaceTime with my parents and share a little bit of Christmas with them. I went back to work the day after Christmas, but Kory had the whole week off. It was SO nice to come home to a clean house and home-cooked meals each day! 

I'm still working on taking all of our Christmas decorations down and putting the gifts away. Hopefully they'll all be down by this weekend.

Kory's Parents and Grandparents Visit Oregon!

I love it that I can have two consecutive blog posts about family visiting! :)

A few weeks ago, Kory's parents, Ben and Jackie, and his grandparents, John Dale and Clara Jayne, came to see us and spend 6 days in our home. It was WONDERFUL!!

Their trip started off a little scary for all of us as they were at the Clackamas Town Center within about 30 minutes of the shooting that took place there on that Tuesday afternoon. They left shortly before it all happened, so we were very grateful they decided to quit shopping and drive to Roseburg instead. Thank you, God, for your protection!

Kory and I had to work the first full day they were here, so they were able to wrap some presents and relax while we worked and led our final high school small groups for the semester. It's SO hard to be motivated at work when you have visitors at your home, especially when you get to see them so infrequently, so we were really thankful to have that Thursday and Friday off work.

Thursday, Kory's grandpa decided to take us all to Bandon for a couple days.  We've been to Bandon several times, but we always make it a day trip since it's only a couple hours away. This time, we got to spend the night and it was so nice! We hung out at the beach, played cards in our hotel room, and enjoyed some really yummy seafood right on the coast.

 We came back from the coast on Friday, and saw some amazing scenery on our trip back. I LOVE that this is what you see beside the road as you're driving in Oregon, especially in December!

 The evening, we went to a drive through light display here in Roseburg called the Festival of Lights. We followed that up by driving around town looking at Christmas light, which made me really nostalgic thinking of my memories doing that each year with my family when I was growing up. 

Saturday, we went out to one of our new favorite places to eat, The Lighthouse Bakery. We knew going into it this time that it was all vegetarian, and we were all prepared for it, unlike when we went with my family. I think all of us really enjoyed it, except Grandpa, but he's so sweet that he would never complain. He just kept saying things like, "I've never had anything like that before" and "Well, that was different." He treated us all to an afternoon showing of The Hobbit and then took us out for a steak dinner to compensate for all those vegetables we had for lunch :)

We did our Christmas exchange that night with Kory's family and it was amazing, as always. I really like the way they open presents. It's not anything revolutionary, but it's a great idea that I hope to continue. Instead of everyone ripping into their presents at once, they go around one person at a time opening one gift at a time. It's fun to be able to really see what other people get and it makes the gift-opening more of an occasion than a 10 minute mad rush. Plus, after you spend so much time and money picking out a present for someone, it's really fun to watch them open and enjoy it. 

Sunday was a pretty typical laid-back day for us with church that morning, lunch and a Cowboys game that afternoon and youth group that evening. One of the very best parts of this week was that we had a LOT of time together, doing some of the "normal" things we do each week. Having them at church with us and getting to eat and relax with them in our home was so nice! When you live far away and only visit a time or two a year, you really miss having that time together doing "the small things".

Despite what they kept insisting, I truly never felt like it was time for them to go or wanted them to leave. It was SUCH a wonderful week with them and we were sad to see them go, as always. However, I was excited about getting some rest...we were on the go so much while they were here that we were all ready for some sleep and down time. 

They left Monday morning and we went back to work while they spent the day flying back to Texas. I am SO thankful they came to spend time with us and that we got to have Christmas with them. It was also really nice telling them bye and knowing we'll see them again in just a couple months. The hardest times to leave are when you don't know how long it will be until you see each other again. This trip made me very grateful to marry into a family I love so much!

My Parents Visit Oregon

We got to spend this past weekend with my parents while they were on vacation in Oregon/Washington for 10 days. It was, of course, wonderful to hang out with them and have them in our home.

They arrived at lunch time Thursday so we met them at our favorite BBQ joint here in Roseburg. Check out the side of fries I got with my sandwich! It is insane how many fries they give you...but I am not complaining!

They completely hid my entire sandwich from that top view! Mmm...I want some fries right now after looking at that picture.

We spent Thursday showing them our house, helping them settle in, grocery shopping and waiting in line at AT&T because my dad's phone wasn't working. After dinner, we had to watch the Oregon Ducks football game and catch up on Duck Dynasty that we had all missed the night before.

Friday, we slept in and enjoyed not having to be anywhere early that morning. We all went for a drive to show my dad around Roseburg and see some pretty scenery. I had heard great things about Lighthouse Bakery so I wanted to go have lunch out there and get some of their delicious cheese bread I had tasted a while back. We somehow missed a very important piece of information about this place: it is entirely vegetarian! Haha My meat-loving family was certainly out of our comfort zone, but everything we had was really yummy! Here is my open-faced sprouts sandwich and farmer's salad that I ordered--so good!

Kory and my dad even tried a veggie burger and veggie turkey sandwich and they were pleasantly surprised with how much they liked them. We did have to make a meat-lovers pizza for dinner to make up for lunch, so I don't really think anyone was converted to the vegetarian way.

Friday night we played cards after dinner and then stayed up way too late watching a dumb show about a marijuana smuggler from the 1970's. I don't know how we get sucked into these terrible tv shows, but it happens every time.

Saturday morning, we took it easy again and my mom taught me how to fry eggs. My parents and I took a trip to Kruse Farms, a local farm that has made (and grown) in Oregon products in addition to their u-pick fields and fresh produce. I love going to Kruse in the summer time to pick strawberries, raspberries, and cherries straight from the fields. They have a large pumpkin patch this time of year, but the rain was really pouring while we were out there so we stayed in the covered market area.

After lunch, we headed out to Wildlife Safari to spend our afternoon with wild animals. This is only about 15 minutes from our house, but we have never been there before. It's a drive-through animal park where most of the animal roam freely. We had our doubts that it might be cheesy, but it was really fun! Here are a few of the animals we got to see up close:

The hippos were eating and that was really cool to watch. Their mouths are SO big!

The location was beautiful! It didn't really feel like we were still in Oregon at times because a lot of the terrain was much different than what I'm used to here. 

This guy was staring me down--a little scary!

I know some of these aren't great quality pictures...the animals are so used to people driving by that they don't really pay a lot of attention to you. The giraffe kept walking right by our car and that was probably my favorite part because I've never been so close to such a gigantic animal!

We came home from the Safari and played doubles ping pong for a while, which was hilariously awful. We took this picture of Kory and I in front of our house and I had every intention of getting a picture with my parents afterwards, but I got distracted by something and forgot. Sorry Mom & Dad! :( After ping pong, we went to dinner at a steakhouse here in town and then finished by watching Sherlock Holmes, one of the few movies we have on Blu-ray.

Sunday morning we went to church and then hit up Red Robin for lunch since my parents had never eaten there. I learned they have petite burgers for $1 less, which thrilled me because their burgers are always way too big for me. We had to come home and nap after that...Sunday naps are pretty much law in the Prude (and now Mereness) family. My parents had to head back to Portland after our nap so they could see my older brother, Ty, and spend the night with him before flying back to NM on Monday. 

We had SUCH a great time with my parents and are so thankful they got to come visit us! It makes not going home for the holidays much more bearable. Love you, Mom! (& Dad too, of course, but I don't know if he reads this blog. Don't you love having a Mom so you can always count on at least one faithful blog reader?!)

Southwest White Chicken Chili

This is the first recipe where I can say that I substituted and added enough ingredients to claim a bit of ownership and not have to credit someone else. I certainly didn't invent this dish, but I took several recipes I found and combined them into what I thought would taste even better. This has become a Mereness favorite and people have even requested that I bring it to potlucks and gatherings! That's exciting for a girl who could barely make Macaroni and Cheese at age 22.

Southwest White Chicken Chili

Prep Time: 10 minutes    Cook Time: 20 minutes   Ready in: 30 minutes

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 packet McCormick white chicken chili seasoning

1 medium onion, chopped

1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chile

1 (10 oz.) can Rotel diced tomatoes with green chile

1 (10.75 oz.) can Campbell's condensed cream of chicken soup

3/4 cup chicken broth

1 1/2 cups frozen whole kernel corn

2 (15 oz.) can white kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the chicken, chili powder, cumin, chili seasoning, onion, green chile, and Rotel and cook until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender, stirring often.

2. Stir the soup, chicken broth, corn and beans in the saucepan and heat to a boil. Reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with cheese and serve. Top with sour cream, if desired.

Menu Ideas

I've been feeling really domestic lately...I think Fall has been good for my motivation! There has been quite a bit of cooking and cleaning and crafting around here. Since I know we all seem to get stuck in a rut with the same recipes, I thought I'd share some of what we've been eating around here to give you some ideas. 

Southwest White Chicken Chili

Beef Stew

Apple Cheddar Squash Soup

Stuffed Pasta Shells

Green Chile Cheeseburgers

Chicken Enchilada Soup

Turkey Chili

Fettuccine Alfredo

Chicken & Beef Fajitas

I plan to share some of these recipes with you soon. As you can tell, I've been putting my Crock Pot to good use and have made lots of yummy chili/soups/stew. Oh, and because I like to keep it real on this blog, when I'm not having leftovers, I've been eating a LOT of peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch :) It is definitely my favorite go-to quick meal when I don't want to cook.

October Update

My blogging lately seems to be mostly random numbered updates, but it works for me so I won't even apologize for it. Here's what's going on in our world lately:

1. We started our High School Bible Studies last week; Kory leads the guys and I lead the girls with my friend, Florence. We're going through Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I've read this book at least 3 times and worked through the book with another small group and I still love it! It's THAT good. We'll do this every Wednesday night through the Fall semester.





2. We went to see Dispatch live in concert in Portland a couple weekends ago as an early birthday present for Kory. It was really fun and they are great to see live! The best part is that I got to be in the front row, which has never happened before.
3. I have been trying to think of a good Halloween costume for about 2 months now and I've still got NOTHING. Any of you have a great idea for me? In the mean time, I've done a few Fall crafts, like this paper pumpkin. I think the stem is a little long, so I might cut that down a bit but it was really easy and turned out pretty cute, in my opinion. I'm going to make a few more to decorate my cubicle at work.



4. In about 6 weeks, I'm going to do what most of you did in Jr. High or High School, and I'll be getting braces. My main concern is that people at work already think I'm a teenager, so this won't really help that image. However, my co-worker and friend, Annie, just got braces on today so we can at least be twins and endure the ridicule together :)
5. In addition to braces, I will be getting 6 fillings, 4 teeth pulled (3 are wisdom), and eventually two implants. Basically, I will be working for the next year so my entire paycheck can pay for my dental care. Fun...
   
   
   Blogger refuses to let me do a #6, so I'm taking that as a hint that this post should just end. Tootles!