Low Carb Cooking- Comfort Food

I hope everyone out there had a great holiday weekend! Ours was busy but fun and we certainly have been enjoying the cold spell that has hit Atlanta. We had friends in from out of town all weekend and therefore we did a lot of eating out. Today Eric and I were both craving a home cooked meal and with the weather being a bit cooler I was feeling the urge to bake something. Unfortunately baking doesn't really go too well with having a husband who is on a low carb diet, Luckily I was able to find the perfect solution! Tonight's dinner was a low carb version of stuffed peppers and oh man did they hit the spot! I adapted the recipe from one on a site called low carb luxury but I ended up making more of a stuffed pepper casserole than individual stuffed peppers. The reason for this is that I ended up with way more filling than I needed to stuff my peppers with. I figured more filing can't be a bad thing so I just filled up the empty spaces in my baking pan with the extras and smothered it with cheese. The dish ended up having three types of cheese and two types of meat in it, plus I kicked it up a notch with some crushed red pepper. Yum! It was satisfying and delicious! Here are some pictures of the process.

fresh peppers and onions, I chose to cut the peppers lengthwise to make them easier to eat

meat mixture cooking with tomatos onions and garlic for the stuffing

the "casserole" ready to go in the oven

the finished product. I don't think I've ever mentioned it before but I am so in love with our dishes, we made a great choice registering for white dinnerware because everything looks awesome on them!

I also had some time today to make a little low carb snack for Eric to take to work in the form of some spiced almonds. Here is the recipe I used but you could really experiment with this and use any spices you want. It turned out to be super easy and tasty!

Step one, get your almonds and spices together. I used paprika, cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin and salt for mine.

Step two, roast the spices in a bit of olive oil.

Step three, roast the almonds in the spice mixture until they are well coated. It's wise to let them cool a little before you eat them but they taste great while they are still warm.

I love having a day at home that I can spend cooking and getting my life organized and today was one of those days. It's especially nice when the weather is so lovely and cool. I'm looking forward to spending our first fall in our amazing home, we are still so in love with it :-)