Stuffed Red Bell Pepper

During my childhood my parents always had a prolific garden each summer with an abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and bell peppers. One of my favorites dishes of my mom's each summer was baked stuffed bell peppers. While we do have a small garden of our own with some bell peppers now, it doesn't include my favorite variety--red bell peppers. However, I found a good sale on them recently so I pulled out the Stuffed Red Bell Pepper recipe which I've frequently used. I cooked about 1 lb. of ground turkey with one large diced onion, and the remaining portion of the pepper tops diced. I then added 2 T. ketchup, 2 t. Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 t. oregano, 1/2 beef stock, and 1 c. cooked rice (I used brown rice). The mixture was then stuffed into 4 large red bell peppers, and cooked for 7 hours on low in the slow cooker. I then garnished the pepper with chopped fresh basil and freshly grated Parmesan. This recipe produces a low fat yet very pleasing dinner without much effort.

Coconut Pancakes

We recently went to the Sunnyside Cafe in Berkeley for a mid-Sunday morning breakfast. I was intrigued by one of their featured items and decided to give them a try...Coconut & Chocolate Chip Pancakes. They were so amazing I decided to attempt a recreation at home (minus the chocolate chips). I took a basic pancake recipe from "Cooking" by James Peterson (2 c. flour, 2 t. baking powder, 1/4 t. salt, 3 eggs, 2 c. milk), but replaced the milk with coconut milk and I added about 2/3 c. shredded coconut. The result was very pleasing! The pancakes had a nice coconut flavor and were lighter in color than some pancakes. While it seems a bit unusual to have pieces of chewy coconut in pancakes, I did really enjoy this variation on typical pancakes. The richness of the pancakes was also quite satisfying to my sweet tooth.