Stuffed Pepper

First off, I wanted to thank you all for blowing up pinterest with some of my blog posts! You made my day. :) It's my birthday week (I'll be 22 on Friday!), and I've been experimenting in the kitchen to celebrate. That almost sounds odd to say! If you ask my friends about my creations they will probably giggle themselves silly. I was never one to cook. In fact, my idea of cooking was a bowl of cereal or mac and cheese. Trust me, I make a mean bowl of cereal; however, thanks to that beautiful website we like to call pinterest, I've been broadening my horizons. Today's creation? Stuffed bell peppers. I've always seen them in the supermarkets. My mouth has always watered longingly at the display case of brightly colored stuffed (expensive!) veggies. So today, my goal was to make one. Every recipe I saw called for so many different things! I am a picky eater, so I knew it couldn't contain tomatoes and onions like every recipe called for. I can handle onion powder, so that was going to be my substitute. There were many great sauces out there, but I didn't have any of the ingredients to make them. So, I ended up with possibly the most simple stuffed pepper recipe ever. It was delicious! Please experiment with it and have fun!

Ingredients: (For 1 serving)

1. One green bell pepper (You can use any color you want but this is my favorite!) 
2. 1/4 cup of ground beef
3. 1/4 cup of rice (and 3/4 cup of water to make it) 
4. 1 handful (I'm guessing this would be around 1/3 cup?) shredded cheddar cheese 
5. 1/4 tsp onion powder
6. 1 tsp (or more according to your tastes) tabasco sauce/ or other hot sauce
7. salt/pepper to taste. 
8. 1 tsp garlic

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. Cut the top off a bell pepper and make sure all the seeds are out. 
3. Bring a pot of water (enough to cover a bell pepper) to a boil. Once it boils, put your bell pepper in for 4 minutes. When it is done, set it aside. 
4. In a small pan cook your meat. You may want to soak the oil out of it with a paper towel. After the meat is browned, put in your garlic and brown that too. (Does that make sense?) :) 
5. In a small pot, add your rice and water. Put a lid on the rice and leave it open a little for the steam to escape. The rice will be done after 7 or 8 minutes. (usually when it stops bubbling and steaming) 
6. When both the meat and rice are done, combine them. I put my meat into the small pot I was cooking the rice in. Add your tabasco, salt, pepper, onion powder, and cheese. Mix! 
7. Spoon your rice/meat mixture into your pepper. Top with more chedder cheese. 
8. I placed my pepper in a small glass pyrex bowl to keep it upright. Bake it for 25 minutes! 

Eat right away! :) I actually had no idea how to eat this so I just took a steak knife and fork and went for it! SO GOOD.