Meatloaf-Stuffed Peppers

Last week's tutorial was kind of fun so I thought I'd take another go at it, this time in the form of a recipe.

Today I'm going to show you how to make stuffed peppers in the crock pot.  I stuff them with a mixture that is essentially the same as my mother's meatloaf.  (The meatloaf uses bread instead of rice but other than that they're identical.)  My mother's meatloaf is the only kind I'll eat.  It is essentially an Italian meatloaf and you can also use the same mixture to make meatballs.  (I have and they're delicious.)

This recipe will make three or four stuffed bell peppers.  More on the numbers later...

The first thing I do is make some rice.

I make a half a cup.  

(Do you own one of these adjustable measuring cups?  They're great for keeping in a canister of flour, sugar, or rice.  I have attached an Amazon link at the bottom of the page if you're interested.)

I use a rice cooker but you can certainly go old school if that's how you roll.

While the rice is cooking I gather the rest of the ingredients for my stuffing:

 First is a package (1.25 lbs) of ground turkey.  You could also use beef.  If you use turkey I recommend using lean but not extra lean; that comes out too dry.  This package had Italian seasoning--which is fine--but you could also use plain.    

You'll also need two eggs...

...salt, pepper, garlic powder & parsley...

... Parmesan cheese...

...and an eight ounce can of tomato sauce.

(This is a gratuitous shot of one of my spice drawers.  I've attached a link to some jars at the bottom of the page if you'd like to recreate it.)

 Once you've gathered up all the ingredients, add the eggs to the turkey.

Now, here's where I get into trouble.  

You see, this is my mom's recipe.

This recipe holder is the bomb-diggity.  I. love. it.  See link below if you're interested.  

My mom is Italian.  She's an amazing cook.  And unless she's baking, she tends not to be too big on the measuring.  She'll say things like, "salt it until it tastes like something."  Um. Okay mom.  

(This is probably why I didn't cook until I was 35.)

 I've gotten a little more comfortable about the lack of measuring.  Here I am adding the salt.  It's maybe half a teaspoon??

There goes the garlic powder.  I put in quite a bit.  Maybe a tablespoon?

And just go nuts with the parsley.  Maybe a tablespoon+ for that...

Then add a big ole scoop of Parmesan, maybe 1/8-1/4 of a cup. 

  Now put in maybe 2/3 of the tomato sauce. 

At this point your rice should be ready.

 Go ahead and scoop it out...

...and add it to the turkey mixture.

Then you'll want to mix it all together.  I have always done this with my hands.  

Next you'll hollow out your green bell peppers.  Remember above when I said that the recipe makes three or four?  Well, it really comes down to the size of your peppers versus the size of your crock pot.  My strategy is usually to buy four peppers despite the fact that my pot typically holds only three.  

Well this time around I must have bought some tall skinny peppers because four would have fit just fine.

Except I didn't have four.  

I mean, I thought I had four.  

I could have sworn I bought four.

But when I went to the crisper to get them there were only three.  

I looked everywhere for that fourth pepper.  

I have a bad feeling it's somewhere in my trunk.

(Oh don't judge.  I know I'm not the only one with escaped produce rolling around in my car.)

Ahem.  So as I was saying...

The next step is to stuff the peppers and place them in the crock pot which has been generously coated with cooking spray.

Then you add a little more tomato sauce and some Parmesan cheese on top.

 

I cook mine on high for four hours.

After about an hour your house will begin smelling like my mother's kitchen.  

(You can thank me later.)  

When they're done remove and enjoy.

(And let me know how they turned out!)

Linking:

http://iamaddictedtorecipes.blogspot.com/2012/11/french-canadian-split-pea-soup-slow.html

I'm the Pied Piper (Alternate Title: Pushing My Luck)

So I started a Facebook page for `A Casarella.

And I know we're new friends and all...

(so I'm a little hesitant to ask for favors)

but if you'd pop over and hit "like," I'd be oh-so grateful.  

(And since I'm asking, I'd love it if you'd follow my Pinterest boards too.)

I promise I'll follow you back.  

(Am I pushing my luck yet?)

A Casarella

Promote Your Page Too

Irony

The fact that my "home-centric" blog is causing me to completely neglect my home. 

Well, not completely.  

But I do need to work on balance. 

(Call that goal #7!)

And I have to post this.  

Because it's funny.

Who doesn't love ironing humor?

You can buy one here.

A Party Favor

A few days ago my next door neighbor emailed me asking for a favor.  Now I need to tell you, my next door neighbor is awesome.  I totally won the next-door-neighbor lottery.  If she ever moves, I'm going to sell my house and follow her.  (Because that's not at all creepy...)

But as I was saying... she emailed with a favor.  She wanted to know if I could help her brainstorm ideas for her four-year-old daughter's birthday party.  Now this is the kind of thing that I frequently offer to do for people and I am always thrilled when they realize I'm serious and take me up on it.  As it happened, I had recently seen something on Pinterest that I was dying to try.

Image from Pinterest via http://blog.celebratethebigandsmall.com
PINNERS: If you would like to pin THIS image PLEASE pin it from the site I've linked to above.
The rest of the images in this post are mine and can be pinned from my blog
but I want her to get credit for her image.
THANK YOU!

The idea was initially pinned from here and she was apparently inspired by this.  It's called a "Punch Box" and it's a great alternative to a pinata.  (Four-year-olds with big sticks can be a little scary sometimes.)  Instead of beating on a pinata with a stick, each child punches through one of the pretty colored circles in order to grab the prize inside.  

I set out to make one using some guidance from the originators plus a few of my own ideas.  I also decided to document the process with the intention of doing a tutorial.  It's my first one, so bear with me.  

I started by gathering up some supplies.  I was really lucky in that I had almost everything I needed in my garage.  The most important item (which I forgot to photograph) was the box.  I got my husband a bike rack for Christmas and he had been meaning to disassemble the box it came in for awhile.  I'm glad he didn't.

The first thing I did were some rough measurements of the box.  

I knew I wanted ten circles.  I debated whether line them up or to put them in a random pattern.  I decided to go with the lines.  Ultimately I used my circle cutter to make a template from a brown paper bag.  This helped me plan out the spacing.

Then I used the circle cutter to score the box.
(You can buy your own circle cutter here.)
Sorry about the dark pictures.

My intention was actually to cut the box with the circle cutter but the cardboard was too thick.  So I ended up making the actual cuts with a box cutter:

As you can see, the cuts weren't perfect, but I decided the four-year-olds wouldn't notice.  ;)

I had to take the box apart to do this.  Other bloggers made their own boxes.  

I just took mine apart and then reassembled it.

Then I needed to attach tissue paper to the back of each hole.  At first I tried staples, but they went all the way through to the front of the box and I decided that they might cut one of the children.  Can you see all those little holes?  Yeah, so could I.  Kind of a bummer but I decided not to freak out about it.  

So I turned to my good friend hot glue.  And scotch tape.  Here's a picture of the covered holes:

And here's how they looked from the front.  I used old tissue from my garage-area wrapping station so it's a little rumply-looking:

Pretty cool, huh?  At this point I had already glued on these:

Again, that's a crummy picture, but the letters are called "Twinkle Type," and I had a box of them in my garage.  They were originally purchased at Michael's.  I decided to add them because I thought the middle of the box needed a little extra somethin'-somethin'

Then I flipped the box an added toys on top of each piece of tissue:

  

After that, I took paper bags and cut them like so:

And I taped a bag over each toy.  (Why I didn't think of masking tape for the tissue paper is beyond me..)

It was a hot mess back there with all that tape.  Kind of like a sausage factory; you really don't want to know what's going on inside.  

Finally I reassembled the box using packing tape.  (The one thing I didn't have; fortunately my neighbor did.)

And here is the finished product:

Unfortunately we couldn't make the party but I heard it was a hit.  Here's what remains of the box.  I think I can reuse it:

Please let me know if you attempt one; I'd love to see your pictures!


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One Man's Trash...

Well it's cool and kind of funny

When the cashier calls me honey

She never takes much money

Down at the thrift shop...

~Dan Zanes & Friends*

Love that song by Dan Zanes.

Know what I love more?  Thrifting!  (Yes, at some point thrift store/secondhand shopping got its own verb--though nobody seems to have told spell check).  

My romance with thrifting began as a teenager when I went through a Grateful Dead/hippie-esque phase.  What better place to buy old dashikis and Indian printed skirts than the thrift shop?  Eventually my tastes changed, though, and the thrift shop was replaced by Limited Express (Forenza sweaters anyone?)

I probably didn't venture into another thrift shop until I was in my 30's.  Suddenly I had two little girls.  And what's the best thing about little girls?  Why dressing them up, of course!  (Okay, there are plenty of things that are even better than that but you've gotta admit, the dressing-them-up part is pretty fun.)  Suddenly I was drooling over adorable little dresses in boutiques all over Chicago.  However, the thought of spending $40-$140 (!) on an outfit from Baby Lulu or Oilily was completely outrageous to me, so I did what any smart shopper would do.  I turned to ebay.  (Etsy didn't exist at the time.)

The more I perused ebay, the more intrigued I became about the sellers and what they were selling.  Despite vague descriptions about "gently worn" clothing, I just had a feeling that the clothing being sold didn't come from these sellers' closets.  Then it hit me!  Thrift shops!  I realized that a lot of these people were buying clothes at thrift shops and reselling them on ebay.  I wanted in on that action.

It only took one or two trips before I found my first Oilily (one of the perks of living in a city like Chicago: the thrift shops are filled with good stuff!)  Needless to say I was hooked.  I ended up selling on ebay for a year or two.  It was fun and satisfying and profitable.  But the inventory started to overwhelm me a bit and as my kids grew out of the cute boutiquey clothes and into their own styles, my interest waned.  When my inventory had whittled down to a manageable amount I sold the rest at a children's consignment sale for a small profit.  

It was right about that time that we bought our house.  I soon found that my love of thrifting carried over from clothes to home decor, or what my husband lovingly calls knick-knackery.  (And by lovingly I mean the exact opposite of lovingly.)  

So I thought today I'd share a few of my finds, from things I've loved and kept to things that will populate that barely-existent etsy shop I keep talking about.  You can also read about other finds (and thrifting adventures) here and here.

One of my favorite things to buy at thrift shops is vintage Pyrex.  There is just something about those fun colors and patterns that's addicting.  In a perfect world I'd be a girl with a beach house.  And in its cute, white, weathered kitchen I would use lots of vintage Pyrex in fun colors like pink! and blue!  But alas, the world is not perfect.  For that reason I will likely be selling these finds in my shop:

I'd also keep that beach house stocked with milk glass.  (I believe I've already discussed my love of the milk glass.)  The pieces below?  They're vintage pearlescent milk glass custard cups by Fenton.  I found them at a Goodwill in Palm Springs.  They'd probably do nicely in a shop but I have a feeling they're going to end up in my daughter's room.  I can just see them on her dresser (or nightstand) filled with rings or other small valuables.

The milk glass hen on a nest?  She's going into the store...

...and so is her friend the turkey...

...and the brown hen.

I also love finding pretty tins.  Not sure yet what I'll do with these two Amvets finds:

 

These lanterns from Goodwill are definitely staying with me.

And I can't sell this Pottery Barn charging station on etsy because it's not vintage.  It was $6.50 on a half-price day at Amvets and I just couldn't leave without it.  (Note the original price tag.)  I might clean it up and sell it on ebay or maybe I'll paint it and give it to one of my girls.  I don't need one because I actually made my own.   (More on that in a future post.)

So, what interesting thrift finds have you made lately?

*Not entirely sure those are the exact lyrics; couldn't find them written out anywhere...

Oh, Grow Up!

So a bunch of really cool ladies (like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one) have posed a question to the blogosphere: What do you want your blog to be when it grows up?  In other words, what are your (blog) goals?

This is a timely question for me as it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.  You see, my original goal was merely to start the blog.  (I didn't think much beyond that.  If I had, I probably would have been too overwhelmed to start in the first place.)  Once I'd met that, the next logical goal was to actually maintain the blog.  This is an ongoing thing but given the excitement I feel when a new post is brewing, I think it might be achievable.  After that my goal was to actually tell someone about the blog.  Because, you know, a Hello Kitty diary with a lock would be much easier to work with if I'm just looking to keep a journal.  (Wayy less HTML for one thing.)  You can read about my blog debut here.  (It's not that exciting but if you're brand new to blogging or thinking about starting one, it's worth a peek.)

So now that I've done all that, what next?  Why the heck am I doing all of this and what do I want to get out of it?  Here are the goals I've come up with.  Some are purely about the blog and others are more tangentially related but all of them are relevant in some way:

Goal #1:  Be True to Myself

That might sound simple, even trite, but let me explain:  for the first few posts in this blog I was really writing for myself.  No one else was reading (except my sister-in-law who is my biggest champion) so I didn't worry about offending anyone, or holding a reader's interest, or whether or not the blog was as visually pleasing as other blogs.

Once other people started reading, I noticed a shift.  It was more difficult to construct a post.  I was constantly worrying about the reader instead of focusing on the content.  

Now, I'm not saying that a writer shouldn't think about his or her audience.  Of course that's important.  A writer needs to write clearly and choose content that will capture his or her readers.  But in the end, this is a personal blog, and if I spend all of my time trying to be someone that I'm not then it becomes, well... something else, and I don't think that's what I want.  

Related to this is the fact that my blog does not have a unifying theme.  I've been thinking a lot about that lately too and, although it feels a bit selfish, I've decided to embrace it.  Why is it selfish you ask?  Well, if my blog had a specific topic, then people would know what they were getting.  It would be a destination for people who are looking for something specific.  Most of the blogs I love focus on specific topics, typically home decor, DIY, design, etc.  Truth is, though, if I tried to maintain a blog with that narrow a focus, I'd be in big trouble.  I simply would not have enough material, so to speak.  So I just have to put myself out there and hope that the things that interest me (things ranging from Monkey Hooks to Kristen Bell) interest other people too, so they'll continue to come back.  And that brings us to...

Goal #2: Make Some Dough-Re-Mi

Oh gosh, that just looks so crass all written out on the page like that.  Really, it feels kind of dirty.  But this is about honesty, so I'm not going to lie:  I'd love it if I could make some money off of this bad boy.  Listen, I'm not aiming to make Dooce money.  I'm not even looking to support myself.  I'd just like to be able to contribute something financially to my family.  If I could actually make some money from writing about the things that I love (writing being one of the things that I love), well, then, I'd say I'm pretty much living the dream.  

This picture was taken from the most ridiculously beautiful blog.  It's written in Portugese.  You don't even need to translate it.  The pictures say *that* much!

Goal #3: Start and Promote an Etsy Shop

This is one of those tangentially related goals.  Like I said above, I'm looking to make a financial contribution to my family.  And as much as I'd love to think that I can achieve that via blogging, I'm also kind of a realist. For that reason I'd like to start an etsy shop selling vintage items.  Going to thrift shops and vintage shops is something I adore.  I love the thrill of the hunt.  I love getting something for (next to) nothing.  And I especially love the idea of making some money while doing what I love.  

What does that have to do with the blog?  Well, judging from what I see out there, it seems there is a  natural symbiosis between etsy shops and blogs.  When I find an etsy seller that I like, I often check to see if s/he has a blog.  Similarly, if I notice that a favorite blogger has an etsy shop, I'll try to stop by and check it out.  I also think that it's interesting to hear about one's thrifting (or crafting) adventures and then see the items purchased (or made) go up in a store--particularly if I'm interested in buying said items ;)

I'm pleased to announce that I have been actively working on this goal.  As in, I've put up my first listing.  (I'd be so grateful if you'd check it out.)  

Clearly I'm approaching the shop a lot like I approached the blog, with baby steps, but I'm excited to see where it goes.  :)        

Goal #4:  Become a Better Photographer

This one's a no-brainer.  Some of my favorite blogs are my favorite blogs because of the way they look.  Photographs are a big part of that (see caption above).  Some of the photos in my blog have been hits and others have been misses.  I'd love to rack up more checks in the hits column.

When my stepfather gave me a beautiful SLR camera a couple of years ago, I promised myself that I would sit down with the manual and learn to use it.  Every week I faithfully dust that manual as it sits on my nightstand waiting to be read.  Since that (obviously) isn't working I'm thinking about taking an adult ed class on using your SLR camera.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Goal #5:  Make Connections/"Meet" People

I started this blog hoping that I would someday have readers.  As it turns out several of those readers are starting to feel more like friends.  This was an unexpected and lovely surprise.  I find that a lot of my fellow bloggers are like-minded women (at least, they seem to be mostly women) who rejoice in lifting one another up.  What a bonus!  It's little like having co-workers, except I can interact with them while wearing my pajamas.  And the ability to interact with people whilst wearing pajamas?  Well, you can just call that goal #6 ;)



(Turns out there are even more cool ladies hosting this shindig.  Find them here and here and here and here and here.)