It smells wonderful already

As I'm typing this, the house is filling with great smells. I was just saying to Marc that it's funny how much higher the quality of our average meal is when we're dieting. Well, really, I am dieting. Marc's keeping me company. He has a few extra pounds he wants to lose, but his diet really involves his current clothes fitting better, whereas my diet involves (hopefully) winding up in a whole new set of clothes!

So this afternoon, having missed lunch (not a good thing when one is dieting), we needed to make something good for late lunch/early dinner. Marc reminded me of a stuffed peppers recipe I used to make. It was a favorite of mine a while back, and it's completely diet-safe.

BTW, we're taking a low-carb approach. The details aren't important, but the short description is that it's not as extreme as Atkins (since you eat more veggies, fruit, and a small amount of bread). It's the only diet that ever really worked for me. I've lost small amounts trying other diets, but this really worked! Unfortunately, I've since gained most of the weight back (but at least not every bit of it). So I'm back at it, with my babe's help and encouragement.

This afternoon, as I did things around here, Marc ran out and bought four green peppers and almost three pounds of beef.

To the beef, I added two eggs, chopped garlic, fresh basil from the garden, oregano, onion powder (yes, I cheated on that), red pepper and a bit of Heinz low-carb ketchup (it's just easier than tomato paste). We then cut the peppers in half, removing the extraneous matter (seeds and such) and put them in a pan. One by one, I stuffed each pepper and then put a thin coating of the ketchup on top of each.

By the time I was done, the Trivection oven was ready (since I started it up right before I started stuffing the peppers). I told it that these were beef and that I'd normally bake them for 75 minutes at 325 degrees. It said, okay, that will take 25 minutes. I just love this oven!

Of course, I'll use the meat thermometer to double-check the internal temp before I pull them from the oven, but the oven's usually pretty accurate in its approximations of cooking time.

In the short time it has taken to type this, the odors emanating from the kitchen have gotten even stronger. It smells fabulous. I sure hope it is when it's done!

(Oh yeah, we're also roasting some asparagus to go with the meal, but that pales in comparison!) :)