Day One - Italian Stuffed Peppers and Letting Go of Perfection

I love peppers.  This was not always the case, as my poor green pepper loving parents will testify.  Sometimes I think I was just picky to be that way. Anyone else?

Anyways this recipe combines two food loves: peppers and italian food.  This recipe is also man friendly.  Please refer to the husband friendly section in the recipe.  I will do a "husband friendly" variation on most of my recipes so that if only one person in the house is eating clean it is easy to modify.  Also I will try to post overall cost and cost per serving on each recipe.  Eating healthy doesn't  have to cost a ton of money. :)

Italian Stuffed Peppers
adapted from here

 Ingredients

  -1 lb of good quality ground beef (or you could substitute ground chicken, turkey, or pork)
-24 oz can of sugar free tomato sauce
-6 peppers (I like to get green and tri-color)
-1 Tbsp. minced fresh garlic
-1 to 1.5 tsp italian seasoning mix (or combo of basil, oregano, marjoram, and rosemary)
-salt and pepper (optional)
-box of frozen chopped spinach

                                                           


Husband Friendly Ingredients

-ball of fresh mozzarella
-1/4 c. parm cheese

Directions

1. Brown ground beef.  Defrost spinach in microwave.
2. Add sauce, garlic, seasonings, and spinach to beef.
3. Wash and cut peppers in half lengthwise.  Remove seeds, stems, and veins.
4. Line baking sheet with foil.
5. Fill pepper halves with beef mixture and place on sheet. (See below for Husband Friendly option.)
6. Bake at 450 for 20-30 minutes.

Husband Friendly Directions
1. After filling half the peppers add the parm cheese to the beef mixture, stir, and fill remaining peppers.
2. Slice the cheese into 6 slices and top the husband friendly half peppers.

Makes 6 servings for $17 ($13 without the cheeses) for a total of $2.83/serving ($2.17/serving).

Thought of the day: I used to have perfectionist tendencies.  Sometimes it was paralyzing and kept me from even starting because I was sure the end result would not be perfect.  Then I had an amazing discussion with someone about perfection and she laid it out like this:

Say you have two balance beams.  Balance beam A is 5 inches off the ground and balance beam B is 6 feet off the ground.  Which one do you feel you would need to walk perfectly across and which one do you think you are more likely to fall off?  I bet most everyone could skip across A but would be wobbly if not fall on B.

My take away (setting aside the whole setting the bar high part that could be construed here) is when you try to be perfect you are more likely to fall.

So how's everyone doing on Day One?