Are we still doing this thing?

I didn't really complete July's challenges. I am not going to lie! But before I throw one down for August, is anyone out there still playing?

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!

Catching Up: Giada BeKiddingme’s April Results

So sorry for the delay in posting my April cooking challenge results. It has been crazy at the BeKiddingme household lately. We moved into a new place last week and while that didn’t stop me from completing the challenges, it did manage to keep me from finding the time to tell you about them. But never fear—our Internet connection is now back up and running and I am slowly digging myself out of boxes in the kitchen so I will be back in business in no time!

I did another two for one in the interest of saving time this month: A lemony seafood risotto with shrimp and scallops paired with Shingleback sparkling shiraz. I really thought I trumped Betty Focker on the BSD front until I got a call from her after her trip to Total Wine. Oh well! At least I managed to find a sparkling red, although I must agree with Betty that I prefer a nice prosecco to the shiraz, especially this time of year. The Shingleback was different and fun, but I doubt I’d shell out $20 again for another bottle. I actually liked it better the second day when it was still just a bit bubbly. But I am classy like that!

Moving on to the risotto, I was anxious to use the homemade seafood stock I had in my freezer following March’s challenge, so I carefully selected a seafood risotto recipe that was highly rated on allrecipes.com. It turned out quite well for a first try, although I did end up adding more stock than the recipe called for and cooking it a bit longer than suggested. While I wouldn’t necessarily have plated and served it to Gordon Ramsay , the hubs was quite impressed and the plates were both very empty at the end of the meal.

I have a boatload of leftover Arborio rice in my new pantry and am dying to try Betty’s risotto so stay tuned for an update on my next foray into risotto-land! I mean when you put bacon in it how could it go wrong?

Here are some risotto photos (ba dump ump) including a picture of my “helper”:

April Challenge Rollout from Giada BeKiddingme

Believe it or not, April is already here! As much fun as we had with the March challenges, the ladies all came to a concensus yesterday that four challenges is a bit too ambitious for all of us working mommies. Cooking is fun but hard to squeeze in some days so we wanted to change the structure of the Cook Club to make it a little easier to manage. Therefore Betty Focker and I will challenge in the even months and Olive Oyl and Sue Scheff will take the odds.

To make it a little more interesting, we started a monthly poll that will give 1 chef each month some bragging rights. You can choose which chef wins based on how many challenges they completed, how well their dishes appeared to turn out, or if you just found their witty commentary to be most entertaining. It's whatever, just be sure to vote!

So let's get this month started with my challenge: Risotto from scratch!

I am a passionate follower of Chef Gordon Ramsay. So much so that my husband thinks he is my celebrity crush. Maybe he is, I'll never tell! Let's just say I love his ability to be so direct with people. I wish more people in life would just tell you what they are really thinking rather than trying to sugar coat everything. Anyway, I digress. If you've watched him, you've heard about the qualities that comprise a perfect risotto. It is one of the first things he teaches his chefs and it is something I've never made at home before. Considering how intimidating Ramsay can be, I think making a risotto from scratch is quite a challenge and I look forward to trying it out this month. Luckily, none of us will have to have Chef Ramsay taste it!

Can't wait to see what type of risotto you choose and how it turns out.

Smoochies!
Giada

3 Birds, 1 Stone: Giada's March Challenge Update

Okay, so I kind of cheated with my March challenges. I had planned to combine Olive's grilling challenge with Betty Focker's challenge of dusting off one of my kitchen gadgets that hadn't been used in a while, when Sue Scheff threw down a South Beach recipe challenge. All of a sudden it came to me, I was going to complete all three challenges at once by making Bobby Flay's indoor steaks. A) We saw this demo at South Beach B) I got to grill something albeit indoors and C) I got to use our grill pan which rarely ever sees the light of day. I didn't mean to cheat, it just kind of fell into place for me this way.

I have to say, although my husband tried to make me feel better by saying he liked them, the steaks didn't come out near as well as Betty Focker's boyfriend Bobby's appeared to in South Beach. I may try them again sometime on the real grill, but even following his instructions they got too well done for our taste. But the purpose of these challenges is to break out of the norm and try something new, so that I did! To accompany the steaks I made lobster tails and boiled down the water, lemons, herbs and spices into a nice stock afterward that I plan to use when I throw down next month's challenge. Just wait!