Stuffed Peppers with Cabbage:ARF/5-A-Day Tuesday.More South Beach Success Stories.

It's so nice that Sweetnicks started ARF/5-A-Day Tuesdays so we can all focus on eating our veggies and anti-oxidant rich foods. Every week I'm having fun thinking of something to make for this event. This week my local store had red peppers on sale for $1.00 each, and I hadn't had stuffed peppers for a while, so I decided to experiment. I did a couple of things that were new for me. First, I (gasp) did not pre-cook the peppers. That meant they were cooked by roasting, which I thought gave a great flavor and kept them a bit more tender-crisp than normal stuffed peppers. Second, I put a good bit of finely diced cabbage in the stuffing to notch up the nutrition a bit, since cabbage is one of The World's Healthiest Foods, at least according to the list by the George Mateljan Foundation. I added brown rice and cremini mushrooms to the stuffing for even more nutrition. The long baking time to get the peppers roasted caused the Italian Sausage flavor to go all through the stuffing. These were quite simply the best stuffed peppers I've ever made.

I had a phase one recipe for stuffed peppers, but now that I am eating more complex carbs, I wanted to adapt the recipe a little. I read a few recipes from Foodieview and Epicurious to get ideas for a new recipe, but ultimately I created this recipe as I went, my favorite way to cook.

Stuffed Peppers with Cabbage
(4 servings, or 8 servings as part of a bigger meal)
4 large red bell peppers
2 links hot Italian Sausage (turkey sausage is lower in fat and just as tasty)
1/2 pound ground chuck
1/2 onion, diced small
1-2 T olive oil
1 T minced garlic
8 oz. diced cremini or portabella mushrooms (if you must use regular white mushrooms, be sure to cook off all the liquid)
2 cups very finely chopped cabbage
2 tsp. dried basil
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 cups cooked brown rice
1/2 cup coarsely grated parmesan, plus 4 T for topping peppers
salt, pepper

Saute Italian Sausage and ground chuck in large frying pan until well browned, breaking into small pieces with turner as it cooks. Remove meat, pour out fat, and wipe out pan. Add 1 T olive oil, heat 1 minute, then add onion and saute 3 minutes. Add minced garlic and saute 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, basil, and oregano, and saute 3 minutes. When mushrooms are soft, add cabbage and more olive oil if needed, and saute until soft, about 3 minutes more. Add meat back into pan and heat through. Turn off heat and mix in brown rice and parmesan cheese. Season mixture with salt and pepper.

Turn on oven and heat to 350 F. Find a glass dish just large enough to hold the peppers so they will stand upright. Cut off stem end of each pepper and remove seeds. (Save the stem end pieces for another use.) If the other end is not reasonably flat, cut off a thin layer to make a flat bottom on each pepper. (Usually some need this and some don't.) Fill each pepper with stuffing, packing it in tightly with a spoon. Cover with foil and bake 45 minutes to one hour, until peppers are fairly soft. When peppers seem nearly done, put about one tablespoon coarsely grated parmesan on the top of each pepper, and bake uncovered 10-15 minutes more, until cheese is browned.

(Note: I baked my peppers for one hour at 350 F before I added the cheese, but it was in a toaster oven, which I sometimes think takes longer to cook things through. You want the peppers to still be a tiny bit crisp for best flavor, so adjust the time accordingly.)

This is a perfect South Beach Diet dish for phase 2 or 3, especially if you use brown rice and be careful to use turkey Italian Sausage and a low fat ground chuck. To make a great meal, all you need to add is something like Cucumbers Caesar and maybe some Slow Roasted Asparagus.

More South Beach Success Stories

Since so many people start diets in January, this month I have been asking readers to tell me about their success on the South Beach Diet so I could share it for those who are just starting to eat the lower carb way. January ends today, but here's one last story I got from a reader who uses the online identity Sheeijan:

Over a year ago I started the South Beach Diet. I don't know how many pounds I lost in all because I refused to weigh myself initially (I was too scared of what the scale would say). But I can say that I went from a size 12 to a size 2. I'm only 5 feet 2 inches, so I don't fit into the "10 pounds = 1 size" theory. My guesstimate is that I've lost about 30 pounds in all. When I started the diet my goal was a size 6, something I had not seen since college, which was over 10 years ago. But it was so easy to just keep going after I hit my initial goal, until now I'm looking the best I've ever looked, and I feel the healthiest ever in my life.

Interestingly enough, I initially started with the Atkins Diet, but after about a week I switched (to South Beach) and never looked back. I've managed to keep the weight off (which can sometimes be the hardest part), and I owe it all to the SBD lifestyle and websites like yours. I only became acquainted with your website in particular a couple of months ago, but I already love your recipes and they help keep me interested in cooking low carb, healthy things instead of taking the easy way out with fastfood or high calorie takeout. So, thank you Kalyn! Your hard work and efforts are truly appreciated.

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