Stuffed Peppers - for realz this time!

The other night, we decided to do stuffed peppers for real instead of our inside-out concoction like last time. I was going off memory and sort of forgot a step, but it still turned out amazing. I'll include the step I forgot.

You will need 4-6 green peppers, depending on how many you're having for dinner. Cut the tops off each pepper and scoop out the seeds and membranes. This is the part I forgot: [Boil the peppers for about 5 minutes to soften them up. Make sure they are completely submerged in the water. Remove them from the water when they're done or else they'll just turn to mush]. Forgetting this part really only make crunchy peppers. Boiling the peppers would make them soft. It's just however you prefer your peppers.

Stuffing- ingredients: rice, ground meat/soy sausage, onion, garlic, mushrooms, tomato sauce; spices: chili powder, cumin, cumin, and - secret ingredient - cinnamon!

Get some rice cooking while you prepare the ingredients. We used whole wheat rice and wheat mixture from a box. It was super tasty! Saute onion and garlic and mushrooms. Add whatever you intend your meat product to be and add some of your spices. I think I may have also used some oregano...

When that's all warmed up and your rice is finished cooking, combine them and mix them up real good, adding a wee bit more of your spices. Make sure to get a healthy (but not heaping!) amount of your cinnamon. You want the flavor of the cinnamon to be noticeable but not known. Make people say, what is that flavor? It's so familiar... It is a well known flavor but not one to expect in stuffed peppers, so it's an amazing combination!

Add a can and a half of tomato sauce. Make sure it's all thoroughly mixed. The other half a can will be used for a topping sauce. In a small bowl, add a teaspoon of sugar and some oregano to this left over sauce.

Stuff your peppers with your delicious delicious stuffing and spoon a little bit of the tomato sauce on top of each. Put them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes on 350. The best way is to them in a baking dish (like a brownie pan) with a drizzle of oil on the bottom to keep the bottoms of the peppers from burning.

Remove and scarf!