by A Grateful Life

If you know me well you know I like to run, even on hot days like today. Following a run I always crave something substantial and nutritious while usually trying to stay close to fresh veggies and healthy proteins. After harvesting some gorgeous peppers and tomatoes from my the garden, the obvious lunch answer was a stuffed pepper.

I decided to stuff it with tons of fresh veg, black beans, and lemon infused quinoa. It’s a super simple recipe that’s worth sharing because stuffed peppers often end up being a pretty heavy meal, but the ones I created today were delightfully summery!

For this Recipe:

3 Radishes

3 Tomatoes

1 cup Washed Black Beans

Green onion (I just broke some off what’s growing in my kitchen, however much you want)

Chopped Carrots

Yellow Squash

Quinoa

Salt & Pepper

1 Lemon

Fresh Basil

Fresh Parsley

You’ll start by cooking the quinoa. I cooked 1 cup of dry quinoa which made more than enough for the stuffing. Chop all of the veggies however you’d like, but small enough to be stuffed into the peppers. Mix the cooked quinoa and all the veggies together in a bowl. Squeeze one lemon into the mix and add a dash of salt and pepper.

The peppers I used were picked from my garden, but you can use any kind of stuffable pepper you’d like.

Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds from inside. Lightly oil the inside of the pepper (I used olive oil).

Once this is done you can then stuff the peppers! Place them inside a dish with a little water in the bottom and place in an oven preheated to 350.

I created a sauce to drizzle over the finished peppers using lemon juice, olive oil, basil, salt, pepper, and fresh parsley.

After about 45 minutes remove the peppers from the oven and enjoy!

An added bonus with this meal is that there was plenty of the quinoa stuffing leftover! Placed over some boston red lettuce it will make a yummy, fresh dinner.