Mexican Stuffed Peppers

I thought the orange peppers were a nice fall touch!

I am usually not a fan of bell peppers- between the waxy texture and the lack of flavor, they just aren't my thing...but these peppers blew me away. They reminded me of a healthy chili rellenos. The cream cheese makes them extra creamy, the bread crumbs are a super buttery crunch and the jalapenos give it just the right amount of kick.

MEXICAN STUFFED PEPPERS (Serves 8)
Ingredients:

• 5 bell peppers, cut in half lengthwise and gutted;
• 1 yellow onion, chopped;
• 1 bunch green onion, chopped (only the green);
  
• 1 box soy "ground beef" crumbles;
• 1/2 cup tofutti sour cream;
• 2 cloves garlic, minced;
• 2 tsp beef boullion (I use this brand- certified vegan, NO ACTUAL BEEF IN IT)
• 1 tsp garlic salt;
• 1 tsp pepper;
• 1 jar salsa ( I used Frontera tomato & garlic)
• Half container (about 1/2 cup) of tofutti cream cheese;
• 1/2 cup brown rice;
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs mixed with 1/4 cup butter and garlic salt, to taste.
• 1/4 cup diced jalapeno peppers (the kind for nachos)

How to Make:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Start your rice first, rice takes way too long to make.
3. While your rice is cooking, saute your onion with the garlic and bouillon and spices until the onion is translucent.
4. Once the onion is done, add the "beef" to the pan along with the sour cream, 1/2 of the jar of salsa, green onion, and the jalapenos (your pan may be getting really full so once everything is warmed you can transfer to a bowl to mix better).
5. If you haven't yet, move everything in the pan into a large mixing bowl and add the rice and cream cheese- mix your filling thoroughly.
6. Pour the remaining salsa in the bottom of a casserole dish and then arrange your pepper shells in the dish.
7. Fill each pepper with the filling to the brim.
8. Top each pepper off with the bread crumb mixture.
9. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20-30 minutes.

And there you have it, a Mexican fiesta in your mouth that you can eat and not feel like you just ate 2000 calories (unless you get carried away and eat all the peppers at once, which I won't judge you if you do.)

Vegan Fried Rice

Vegan fried rice

Tonight we decided to recreate fried rice without the msg, eggs, or meat products that you usually find at a Chinese restaurant. This recipe took a lot of prep time, but honestly, you could probably do most of it the night before and then just throw everything together after work on the stove.

Fried Rice: (serves 6-8 people; aka A LOT of leftovers)

• 2 cups of COOKED rice (we used brown basmati) - My mom recommends day-old rice...that probably would have helped keep the rice from getting sticky.
• 1/2 bag Frozen veggies (we bought a bag that had carrots, peas, corn and green beans)
• 1/2 an onion diced (we used red onion because we had one, but any kind will do- some people recommend scallions)
• 1 package water chesnuts, drained
• 2 cups diced mushroom
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 3 tablespoons Earth Balance for the wok (you can also just use the sesame oil)
• 1 block extra firm tofu- diced and fried (after I press and dice the tofu, I lightly coat the small pieces in cornstarch to make sure they fry crispy)

fffffNOTE: I also added Sriracha sauce to the tofu while I was frying it to make our fried rice spicy. The color of hhhhhhhhhhhh the sauce plus the oil in the pan really made the tofu look like eggs.

Sauce: (the sauce measurements are give and take - add more or less depending on how much seasoning you want, we had a lot of rice so we needed a lot of sauce!)

1. 8 tablespoons soy sauce
2. 6 teaspoons hoisin sauce
3. 5 teaspoons sesame seed oil
4. 5 tablespoons rice vinegar

Equipment:

1. Wok
2. Frying pan (for tofu)
3. Sauce pan for rice

Cooking the Rice:
After waiting 45 minutes for the rice to cook (we really should have done that the night before) and chopping alllllll the veggies we were ready to start frying! Mansoor took over the wok while I handled the tofu (see tofu directions above).

All our veggies, ready to go!

• First: add your onions and garlic to the wok with the Earth Balance and let them saute for about 5 minutes until they are soft.
  
• Then: add the mushrooms and water chestnuts and cook an additional 5 minutes until the mushrooms seem cooked.
• Next: we added the rice to the wok along with our sauce mixture.

gggggggg NOTE: We added ALL our rice at once, which made it REALLY hard to get it to ffffffffffffffffffffff have the "fried"feeling. We recommend adding a little at a time so you can fffffffffffffffffffffffreally get your rice nice and fried.

• Last: we added our frozen vegetables and tofu. We let everything cook for a good 15 minutes before caving in and eating.
  

Overall, the rice was a hit! We both added more soy sauce and sriracha sauce to our rice as we ate, but we were ok with that. We served our rice with frozen egg rolls, which this brand was vegan and DELICIOUS, I was super impressed and would buy them again in a heartbeat.

Best eggrolls ever.