Pizza Bagels

This meal came about because when I went grocery shopping this weekend, I was more focused on Thanksgiving supplies than stuff for meals this week. In other words, I didn’t have any meat to put in a meal other than a packet of pepperoni that I’d picked up last week because I made the mistake of shopping when hungry.

I didn’t feel like making pizza dough so I decided to use the bagels that I’d picked up to make a fun dinner.

I started with the two bagels I had left: poppyseed and egg.

Sliced them each in half.

And toasted them for a few minutes. I wanted them to crisp up a little bit before putting the sauce on.

While they were toasting, gathered my other three ingredients: Classico pizza sauce, pepperoni, and cheese. I didn’t have mozzarella, so I used Mexican blend.

Bagels are toasted!

Here’s the sauce:

And the cheese…

I decided to season them garlic powder…

And oregano…

And some crushed red pepper flakes.

Finally, some pepperoni.

Pop them in the toaster oven, which I had set to 400, and let them bake for a while.

Simple as that.

Not too healthy, of course, but they were damn yummy. Today, that’s all I cared about.

Stuffed Peppers, Third Attempt

I feel like I owe an apology to Gina at skinnytaste.com. I tried her recipe for turkey stuffed peppers, using ground beef instead of ground turkey, and was pretty unenthused by the result. This was my post about it. I didn’t think the flavor was good enough, and the texture put me off, as well. I pretty much decided to go back to the first recipe that I’d tried, which I wrote about here, even though it was much more fattening.

But I decided recently to give Gina’s recipe another chance, this time with ground turkey, as she intended. Other changes:

• My cilantro was pureed and in a tube in the fridge, not cut up freshly on my cutting board. I think this led to me using a lot more of it.
• Instead of 1/4 cup of tomato sauce in the meat mixture, I used closer to a half cup. And I used leftover homemade pizza sauce instead of tomato sauce from a can. It was richer, sweeter, and spicier than plain old tomato sauce.
• I used fresh, homegrown garlic, rather than stuff from a jar.
• My cooked rice was fresh, hot, and fluffy, rather than cold and clumpy and straight from the fridge.
• I put a little bit more pizza sauce on top of the stuffed peppers before cheesing them up and baking them. Not a ton, maybe about a spoonful.

So, other than the meat change, not huge changes.

But the end result was SO MUCH BETTER.

For one thing, they were juicier. I’m not sure why. And the texture of the cooked meat was much less off-putting. I’m not sure if it was because it was turkey and not beef, or if I had cooked the beef a little long, or if it had something to do with the hot, fluffy rice and extra tomato sauce, but it was a definite improvement.

I’m pleased by the change because the texture is what I disliked the most last time. Now I feel like I can make this again.

As for the taste, I remember thinking it was bland last time. I didn’t get that sense this time at all. I’m not sure if it was using (probably) more cilantro, or using fresh garlic, or using the homemade pizza sauce and more of it.

Whatever the difference was, it was a good one.

So Gina at SkinnyTaste, I am sorry. Your recipe is damn good.