Stuffed Bell Peppers

Years ago I found a recipe in a magazine for zucchini boats. I believe it called for ground turkey, sour cream, Parmesan cheese and some spices for the filling. This was the "inspiration" for the filling I now use for the very same zucchini boats as well as stuffed bell peppers. Each time I make this I am winging it; but I'll do my best to write it out as a recipe in case you want to give it a try!

• 1/2 pound of organic turkey meat. This time around I went w/ dark meat; just because!
• 1 or 2 containers of plain greek yogurt. I substitute plain greek yogurt for sour cream in pretty much all recipes. It's just better for you! Sometimes I use one container, other times I use 2 depending on how creamy you want the mixture (I think two is better).
• 1 egg
• About 2 cups of cooked quinoa. I cooked about 1/2 cup of quinoa and it came out to about 2 cups.
• Veggies: a few chopped mushrooms, artichoke hearts, zucchini or anything you have on hand. On this particular day, I didn't have any zucchini but I did have some cauliflower that i need to use so I chopped it pretty small and threw it in! I probably throw in about 1-2 cups worth of chopped veggies. Again, I eyeball everything.
• A few dashes of basil, oregano and pepper.
• About a 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
• Chia seeds-I hydrate about 1-2 tablespoons of chia seeds at the beginning of this process so they're good and gooey and ready to mix in by the time I've thrown everything else together. *You don't need to include these if you're not into chia seeds. I sneak them in bc you don't even know they're there and they add A LOT of nutrition. Again, I try to pack as much nutrition I can into everything I make.

Basically I just combine all of the above ingredients. Again, I eyeball this entire "recipe" but it more or less turns out the same each time! To save time, I browned the turkey meat and cooked the quinoa the night before. When I got home from work I mixed everything all up, washed some bell peppers, cut the tops off and threw away the seeds, stuffed them with the mixture and popped them in the oven (in a casserole dish) on 350 for about 45 minutes to an hour. I prefer them after they've cooked for about 45 minutes but my husband likes the pepper to be really soft (and mushy if you ask me) so I cook them a little longer for his sake. I use a variety of peppers-red, green, orange and yellow (whatever I can find that is ORGANIC)!

My 3 year old has an aversion to anything red (doesn't like tomatoes) so he wasn't keen on the red pepper but he ate all the filling (loaded with veggies!) and a lot of the green pepper. My 16 month old is an easy sell! He eats more than his brother and happily gobbled everything on his plate, peppers and all!

Hope you try this and hope you like it!