Super Simple Guacamole

I never used to like guacamole.  That is until last Christmas.  Ben and I were staying at his parents' house over break and we wanted to go on a detox diet.  I found one that I thought I could do (in case you didn't know, I can be quite the picky eater) that mostly involved eating fruits, veggies and drinking 10 cups of water per day.  It was perfect to do at Ben's house because his family is on the GAPS diet so they eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies.

Anyways...on the last night of our diet we were allowed to have one small homemade hamburger.  Ben put guacamole on his and said I should try it.  I did and loved it.  At the time I thought it was just because I was starving and I thought anything besides clementines tasted amazing but it turns out I really do like guacamole (and hamburgers, but that's another story for another day).

With it being summertime, I thought I'd share a recipe I got from Ben's mom (thanks Bonnie!) that I tweeked a little bit.  It turned out so yummy!

Guacamole Recipe
Ingredients:

• 1 medium tomato
• 2 medium avocados
• 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1/2 onion
• 2-3 cloves of garlic

Directions:

1. Dice your tomato, avocados and onion and mince your garlic cloves
2. Put all ingredients in a bowl and mash to desired consistency (I used a potato masher). Or you can put all of the ingredients into a food processor and process until desired consistency.

How easy is that? Also, I had read online that if you keep the pits of the avocados in the guacamole, it prevented it from turning brown.  I tried it and it totally worked! It did still brown but it was at least 5 days before it did so; waaaay longer than if you leave it without the pits.  

Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers

Not a ton to report this week.  School and work were extremely busy for both of us.  For fun we went to dinner with my dad who was in town and my grandma; our friends Sydney and Jon came over on Friday night for games and treats and last night we went to the temple.

Because nothing super amazing/exciting happened (and because I have been awful about taking pictures lately), Ben said I should post about something I made for dinner this week.

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a food blog so I guess I'll see if I like doing that here first :)

Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers:
Ingredients:

• 4-6 bell peppers (I used 4 red ones, but they were HUGE!)
• 1 cup uncooked rice
• 2 cloves of garlic (I usually use minced garlic from a giant container we got at Sam's)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 can of diced tomatoes, drained a little bit (I used a can that also had green chiles in it)
• shredded cheese
• Valentina sauce

Instructions:

• Cook the rice in whatever method you prefer. (I love using my rice cooker)
• As the rice is cooking, wash and dry the peppers then cut the tops off of the peppers and scoop out the core, seeds and other yucky parts.  Save the tops for later.
• Dice the onion and sauté in heated oil with garlic until transparent.
• While the onions are cooking, go back to the pepper tops and cut out the green stem.  Chop the pepper tops into pieces.
• After onions are almost transparent, add the chopped pepper tops and continue to cook for a few minutes.
• Add in the can of tomatoes.  Mix until heated through.
• Once your rice is done, add some Valentina sauce to the rice until it reaches your desired level of spiciness.  (If you are using tomatoes with green chilies you may want to not add as much though, those chilies can be quite strong!)
• Mix the rice and veggies together.  After the mixture has cooled a bit, add a couple handfuls of shredded cheese.

• Stuff your peppers with spoonfuls of the rice and veggie mixture.  Make sure to really stuff them! Top with some shredded cheese if desired.
• Pull out your crock pot and add between 1/2 and 1 1/2 cups of water to the bottom.  Then, nestle in your peppers next to each other.  I liked to lean a few up against the outside wall of the crock and then lean the others next to those.  
• Cook on low for 4-6 hours. 

You can definitely alter and play with the stuffing of these peppers.  I based this recipe off of this recipe I found online and I got the idea for cooking them in the crock pot from this website.