Today, I have no bento. I’m took a day off to help my mom prepare for the garage sale we’re holding this weekend. Instead of a bento, I made a great dish last night and decided to share pictures.
A few weeks ago, I told Yvo that I had an idea for a dish that I thought would be awesome. I wanted to use the crawfish stuffing to stuff a bell pepper. If you remember, I had some of the stuffing from the crawfish bisque tucked away in my freezer. Then, the really hot weather hit down here, and there was no way I could think of turning the oven on. A pending garage sale, another kitchen rearrange, and I found a way to lay out and use all my kitchen appliances I love so much: bread maker, toaster oven, toaster, and rice cooker. With the toaster oven out and available for use, this idea became a real possibility.
Here are the ingredients: bacon, cooked quinoa, red peppers, and crawfish stuffing. Things are looking promising already.
I dumped the quinoa and crawfish stuffing in a bowl together and mixed well. Red peppers had their tops chopped and their insides cleaned. I cut each pepper along its ridges to create a boat. The quinoa/crawfish mixtured filled each boat and was topped with slices of bacon.
The pepper boats were placed on the baking pan for my toaster oven; it was greased of course! I cooked this at 300 degrees until the bacon looked cooked but not crisping yet. At that point, I increased the temperature to 350 degrees and cooked until the bacon was nice and crisp.
A little spinach on the plate and thinly sliced cucumbers completed this dish to make one EVER-LOVIN’ FANTASTIC MEAL. Yes, this was so totally tasty. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
Be the bento everyone!
Picture storyboards are from Coffeeshop Photography, one of my favorite resources for photoshop tutorials and fun! I wanted to Rita credit for her awesome storyboard and her generosity for offering them free to anyone who stumbles upon her blog. Go check her out if you’re a photog like me.
Well done! You’re giving Julia Child a run for her money Jenn! : )
That looks so yummy! Did those peppers come from your garden? It got too hot for bell peppers over here in Texas. I’m hoping the plants survive and put on more in the Fall like they did last year.
Unfortunately, they are not from my garden. I have lots off little bell peppers on there, I’m just not sure if they are going to finish up producing or not. I didn’t realize how SLOW bell peppers are to produce. The thing I want the most so I’m impatient.
I’ve been buying them from the farmer’s market instead. BOO! hopefully, i’ll get a few in the coming weeks. We’ve had some rain lately and I got lucky that all our hot weather didn’t totally burn ‘em up. But I’m not sure if they’ll finish their production.
I think I had my revenge with the cupcake, but I read this after I sent it so I’m all fluffed up again
Looks totally awesome, you showed such restraint. I would have just stuffed the stuffing straight into the bell peppers, topped with bacon, called it a day. Quinoa? What quinoa? Who needs that? LOL
LOL! Well, I was thinking about the stuffed bell peppers my mom would make for herself when I was a kid. They normally contained a rice/groundmeat mixture. Which is why I included teh quinoa.
there’s just seriously no way this could have NOT been good – I sorta wanna roll in the stuffing
I will admit this was damn good. I have to look and see if I have any more stuffing. If I do, I am so doing this again. And if I do it again, I think I’d add crumbled bits of bacon to the stuffing as well as topping it with a piece of bacon. Yeah, crumbled bits of bacon in the stuffing would have been an excellent idea.
so yummy!! It makes me hungry!!