Double time, Make-up time

  I know, I know, it has been a long time since I have made a post. Life has been crazy lately! Since the last post, I have gotten a minor cold and had a bout of strep throat. This was the third bout of strep throat in 4 months and the doctor suggested I consider having my tonsils removed. After searching the internet and reading some stories about tonsillectomies, I have officially scared myself into a healthy lifestyle to avoid getting sick again. On that note, I have a 6 things (mostly healthy, some sweet, some crafty) I need to update onto my blog! To make up for my absence, I will treat you, today, to 2 different recipes- 1 healthy, and 1 sweet!

Healthy Stuffed Peppers

Items you'll need:

 Green Peppers ( I used 3, which fed 3 people and I had left overs)

 Ground Turkey

 1 Onion- finely chopped

 1 garlic clove- finely chopped

 1 carrot- finely chopped

 black pepper

 1/2 tbsp of  basil

 1/2 tbsp of parsley 

 1/2 tbsp of oregano

  Red Pepper Flakes (amount desired based on taste)

  8oz can of Tomato paste

  water

  Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Steps to deliciousness:

Preheat oven to 350. 

Finely chop onion, garlic, and carrot. ( I placed all three in my food chopper at once, so it chopped and mixed them.)  Meanwhile, begin to brown ground turkey. Once veggies are chopped, add them to the turkey that is the pan. After a couple of minutes on the heat, add the black pepper, basil, parsley, oregano and red pepper flakes to the pan. (Feel free to add more seasoning. I just shake the seasoning over the pan, so the measurements are really guesstimates.) Cook until meat is light brown and veggies are soft; then add the the tomato paste and 4 oz of water-stir. Let the all items in the pan simmer together for a couple minutes so that all the flavors blend. 

While the items in the pan simmer clean and cut green peppers in half.

Once the green peppers are cut and sauce has simmered place green peppers in a glass dish. Then spoon the meat mixture into the green peppers and top with mozzarella cheese.

 Place in oven and cook for 15-25 minutes. You will know they are ready because the green peppers begin to look tender and are a darker green. See picture above ingredients for what mine looked like when I took them out of the oven. Enjoy!!

Hubby's favorite cookie of all time

My husband is not a huge fan of chocolate. Typically, when I make cookies I would make chocolate chip for me and sugar for him. That was until recently...  A few weeks ago, I was watching my niece and she came up with the great idea to make " a really big cookie". Now, she LOVES chocolate, so I decided we would make a really big chocolate chip cookie.  I used the recipe on the back of the Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chip bag with a few variations. 

Here's what you will need: 

 2 1/4 cups of unsifted flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp of salt

2 sticks (1 cup) of butter, softened ( I use very soft butter- so soft that when you touch the butter some comes off on your finger)

3/4 cups of sugar

3/4 cups of brown sugar, packed

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips ( in this case Ghirardelli)

1/2 cup mini-marshmallows 

Side note:  The mini-marshmallows happened by accident- when my niece started throwing mini-marshmallows in the bowl. I love chocolate and marshmallow and thought this could turn out to be really good, and it totally was!)

Steps to deliciousness:

Preheat oven to 375. 

Place all ingredients in a bowl. Use a hand mixer to mix the contents of the bowl and blend the butter into the mixture. Then stir by hand to ensure that all dry ingredients are actually mixed together and the batter is moist and sticky. Lightly spray a large cookie sheet with olive oil. Spoon mixture from the bowl onto the cookie sheet and spread to make one giant cookie. Put pan in the oven and cook for 11-14 minutes. Once warm enough to touch without burning myself, I cut into squares and serve.