Grilled Stuffed Jalapeños

Hey folks!

One of my favorite cookbooks is a 30 Minute Meals Cooking Light cookbook.  It was the first one I ever bought and has the best light dishes I've found as a whole in a cookbook.  I am subscribing to the magazine now!  I picked one up last weekend and found a bunch of recipes that include vegetables I'm growing in my new garden. 

Jalapeños are one of the vegetables I've included in my urban garden but I'm not really sure what to do with them.  I don't particularly enjoy having my eyes water, throat burn, or choking on unnecessarily spicy foods.  The reason I love food is because it tastes good.  I want to enjoy the cheesy queso dip, not sweat to death while eating it because there are habanero peppers in it. 

MMMMM Queso!

OK... back on track...

My Cooking Light magazine (July 2011 issue) has a recipe for Grilled Stuffed Jalapeños.  I originally wanted to make this so I could use more than one pepper at a time from my garden.  They are coming up very quickly.

I made the stuffing first.  2 slices of crumbled bacon, 1/2 cup of cream cheese, 1/2 cup fat-free cream cheese, 1/4 cup of shredded sharp cheddar, 1/4 cup minced green onions, 1 tsp lime juice, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 small garlic clove.

That was easy!  Ok, next step, slice 14 peppers, halve them length-wise and seed them. 

That bit was more physically challenging for me.  Cutting and seeding Jalapeños makes your throat burn - kind of like how slicing onions affects your eyes.  BEWARE.  Also, I sliced off the tops of the peppers rendering them ineffective at holding anything "inside".  Especially a melty cheese mix, which if you have been paying attention, goes in these suckers.

In the months I've been cooking I've come up with one great idea.  For stuffing the peppers I decided to put the cheese mix in a zip lock bag and cut a hole in the corner to squeeze the stuffing out.  I stuffed them like I would ice a cupcake!  Brilliant.  Feel free to steal that idea.  I'm starting to visualize the consequences of my actions.  I thought ahead about what kind of disaster I would create trying to "spoon" the cheese mixture in the pepper.  The mental image wasn't pretty and involved a mop, tears, and a cheese covered spoon stuck to the wall.  See?  I'm learning.

It's time to grill!! I know you might be worried about me being around an open flame, but I did just fine.

I put them on the grill about 5-8 minutes and they blackened on the bottom and the cheese browned a bit.  Some cheese slid off the peppers that could not contain it due to my overeagerness with the kitchen knife.  That cheese didn't brown.  It caked onto the bottom of the grill.

I figured these would be insanely spicy and I would hate them.  I actually really really liked these!  They are spicy but not overwhelmingly so.  You could taste the cheese and the sting from the spice went away quickly.  Seriously, these were so good. 

Please try these and let me know how it goes!! Gracias!

My Garden

Hey folks! I know it's been awhile.  I've been working, traveling to California and engulfed in my new project... gardening!

Like other "womanly" activities that one might expect girls to naturally possess, gardening is one that I must teach myself.  When it comes to houseplants it is a known fact I have the black thumb of death.  I can kill fake flowers.  It's really that bad.  I have no knowledge of plant germination periods much less what some vegetables even look like.  Did you know squash grows above ground?  I bet you did.

Since gardening goes hand-in-hand with cooking, I wanted to make a post about my "progress" on the blog!

My apartment has something called an Urban Garden centrally located in the apartment complex with 20-something slots.  I was on the waiting list for about 5 months and now have my own patch.  After pulling weeds for an hour I was ready to go.

At first I planted basil.  I figured it wouldn't grow so I planted the entire packet in two rows.  I took statistics and knew I was going to at least get one plant out of those odds.  After giving one basil plant away and using 3 cups of basil leaves for pesto I still have five plants that are each 2 feet tall.  Basil is great to include in your garden when you need a swift validation of your gardening ability... or to hide a small child.

I planted red and green bell peppers...

... and Eggplant which I plan to make one of my favorites - Eggplant Parmesan!!

I also included jalapeños!  I am going to be making jalapeño poppers this week so stay posted...

Lastly, I included yellow summer squash.  I bought two plants and put them at the end of my garden.  This is embarrassing to admit but for some reason I assumed they would grow underground.  Imagine my surprise when I see the largest squash ever squashing (ironic?) the bell pepper plant next to it.  What is this sucker doing above ground?! Ectopic pregnancy??

The picture below is the plant after I've picked the squash (squashes... squashies... squai??) and cut the stems back.  I'll have you know, not two days later the stems grew back threefold.

So, as it stands now, my gardening project is going well and providing fresh vegetables for me to use in the kitchen.  I'll be back later this week to detail the poppers and hopefully the eggplant parmesan!

If you have any tips - feel free to leave comments below.