My Hollaback to Olive's $15 Challenge: by Giada BeKiddingme

Stuffed Green Peppers
Feeds: 4 Hungry Adults!

Ingredients:
2 lb ground beef (or turkey if you want to be healthier) $5.99
4 green peppers $4.00
white rice $1.00
2 15 oz cans stewed tomatoes $2.00
garlic powder, salt, pepper (staple items)
tomato paste $0.50
1 loaf italian bread $1.00

Total cost with 2% NC food tax = $14.77

This did not include my staple items, which most households keep on hand.

My parents have been visiting and my mom suggested this meal for dinner the other night. I immediately took her up on it since it was one of my faves as a kid and I knew it would meet the criteria of feeding a family of 4 for under $15. Whether or not some would consider it a "healthy" meal is subjective however and I had forgotten that part of the challenge. So let's just say you can swap out the ground beef for turkey and use brown rice if you prefer more whole grains in your diet. But I do think there are worse things you can put in stuffed peppers, so compared to all the eating out we've done with family in town, this qualified as a healthy change for us!

Not only is this meal cheap to make but it is super easy. Here are step by step instructions with pictures:

Step 1: Chop tops off peppers and remove seeds. Then add peppers to a pot of boiling water to blanch. You will want to start cooking your rice at this point so it is ready when you need it, and add the ground beef/turkey to a hot pan to brown as well.

Step 2: When peppers have fully changed color in the water, pull them out and place them in a 9x9 baking dish.


Meanwhile, add the stewed tomatoes to the ground beef/turkey, along with a few generous tosses of garlic powder, salt and pepper.


Step 3: Add rice to beef mixture. No picture for this one!

Step 4: Stuff the peppers with the beef/tomato/rice mixture.


Step 5: Slather some tomato paste on top of each pepper and put in the oven at 350 to bake for 20 minutes.

Voila! Peppers are done and ready to serve. We had ours with some fresh italian bread and butter. Not too shabby for 4 adult sized dinners, and I just ate some of the leftover stuffing for lunch too. Challenge success!