I have something for stuffed vegetables. I think they look pretty, exotic and natural. It shows a bit of extra effort and thought you put in, so it’s easy way to get extra points. *cheeky smile* You can fill vegetables such as a capsicum, tomato, zucchini, potato, eggplant… the list goes on.

But I like it for a practical reason. If you have leftover rice and some old vegetables cry out to be used, you can just throw them all in a pan and turn them into a nice filling. With the addition of herbs and spices it will be made into a gourmet dish. It is also a pretty healthy way of eating all the vegetables.

I think the most common filling is rice with some minced beef or bacon and tomato salsa. This recipe is created with lentils for people who don’t like meat so much.  Lentils give a bit of meaty texture and colour to any dishes.

<Baked Capsicum stuffed with lentils>

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 capsicum, halved (1each if you like)
1 onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1stalk of celery, diced
I can tomatoes
2 cups lentils (fresh&cooked or canned)
2 Tbs olive oil
a splash of red wine
1 egg
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
salt n pepper
parsley
carrot, diced – optional
parmesan -optional

Prepare the capsicum by cutting in half and removing seeds
Preheat the oven to 180′C
Cook onion, garlic, celery until soft, and add tomato, lentils and cook further
Add spices, salt, pepper, then egg
Fill capsicum with the mixture, drizzle some olive oil and bake for 30-40 mins
Serve with grated parmesan if desired

* if you like it spicy, add some dried chili or chili powder when you cook the vegetables.

Try that healthy meal with this Popeye salad

Everyone knows how good spinach is for health. It’s full of iron and calcium. But apparently the iron content of spinach was mistakenly reported ten times higher than its actual value during 1930s. Even if so, spinach has many other nutritional benefits including cleaning the liver and preventing night blindness.

The best way to get the most of calcium and iron in spinach is to eat it raw with food with vitamin C. So I came up with this recipe.

<Spinach Salad with Mandarin and Orange>

Ingredients

baby spinach
orange, mandarin
kalamata olives
cucumber
almond or pine nuts – optional
spanish onion – I didn’t have any at that time, so I used spring onion. It matched well, too.
dressing – red wine or balsamic vinegar with olive oil or lemon mustard dressing or any of your choice