Curry Stuffed Peppers & 2 New Granola Variations
Plus continued love for LA
Colorful chefs - new and old, welcome💛
This is where we cook easy, delicious, saucy, colorful meals made from whole, unprocessed foods, and we make it fun, easy, and learn important stuff about metabolic health while doing it.
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Curry-Stuffed Peppers with a Peanut-Basil Sauce 🤤: This recipe has so many colors in it that I honestly lost track, but I think it’s 12? It incorporates nutrient-dense organ meats like beef liver and heart for a hidden boost of vitamins and minerals, but you can easily customize it with any ground meat, veggies, and your preferred curry (red for spicy, yellow for mild). I love this both for meal prep or entertaining (the little pepper tops look so cute when plated!)
Brown Butter Cinnamon Granola and a Honey Miso Granola 🌰: These are two new delicious variations on my fan-fave OG Nut & Seed granola. I make some version of this grain-free granola every single week to eat on top of organic Greek or A2 yogurt, in a small cup with milk (and sometimes chocolate chips!) as an afternoon or evening snack, or on top of smoothies for a little crunch. This also makes an amazing hostess gift, or a “just because” gift for a friend.
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Curry Stuffed Peppers with a Peanut-Basil Sauce
The why behind the recipe:
Stuffed peppers have always felt fun to me, and lately as it’s winter-ish in LA I’ve been craving warm, south Asian flavors, so this is a Thai curry-inspired stuffed pepper. It’s got TONS of colors, flavors, and nutrients, and it works great both for meal prep or for entertaining (the peppers look so darn cute with their little tops served on the side!)
I’ve been experimenting with sneaking in more organ meats into my diet because organs are such a nutritional powerhouse, so in this recipe I used the Force of Nature Grass Fed Regenerative Beef Ancestral Blend that has beef liver and heart. Beef liver is one of THE most nutrient-dense foods, rich in vitamin A, B vitamins (especially B12 - a nutrient many people are deficient in), iron (in its highly bioavailable form), copper, and folate, which all support energy production, immune health, and red blood cell formation. Beef heart is an excellent source of CoQ10, a compound essential for heart health and energy, as well as high-quality protein, selenium, zinc, and more B vitamins.
Our modern diets prioritize muscle meats like ground beef that often lack these nutrients, so incorporating small amounts of organ meats into meals is an excellent way to address gaps in micronutrient intake naturally. Here’s a great article from Force of Nature about why you should eat more organs if you want to dive deeper. I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of the taste of organ meats, but when sneaking them in here you can't taste them at all
I just recently started doing trying to add more organ proteins into my diet, so I’ll keep you updated on how it is going and how I’m feeling. I have been focusing on eating more grass-fed grass-finished red meat each week for the last few months, and have been feeling great doing so.
This recipe is super flexible — you can use any kind of ground meat, and you can use any veggies for your pepper filling. If you like things spicy, I recommend red curry. If you like things a little more mild, I recommend yellow curry.
If you guys like this, let me know if you’d like to see another variation — like traditional Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean or even breakfast stuffed peppers?!
I recipe tested these on some friends, and sous chef Alfie was especially eager to eat these ones 🤣 (10 seconds of silliness below)
Brown Butter Cinnamon Granola and/or Honey Miso Granola
The why behind the recipe:
These are two variations on my OG Nut & Seed granola - I make some version of this every single week. Here are the ways in which I eat it:
On top of yogurt with berries and raw honey (fave brands: Straus Greek, Wallaby plain, Alexandre family farm A2 yogurt, Cocojune vanilla unsweetened)
In a small cup with milk (and sometimes chocolate chips!) as an afternoon or evening snack
On top of smoothies for a little crunch
By the handful - sometimes to just get a few cals in my system before I workout!
This also makes an amazing hostess gift, or a “just because” gift for a friend! This week I delivered tons of these granolas (plus fixings for all the ways I eat it!) to friends impacted by the fires.
Why should you make your own granola? Store-bought granolas often have added sugars, seed oils, and/or are sneaky blood sugar spikers because they have brown rice or oats, leading to a high carb count. My granola is mostly nuts and seeds, so it’s packed with micronutrients and it’s blood sugar friendly. It’s also so much more cost effective to buy nuts in bulk at Costco and make granola at home vs. buying a bag (often in plastic) every week!
Many people LOVE granola with some oats, so I’ll say that if you’ve found you can tolerate some oats without a blood sugar spike, swap out one cup of the nuts for 1 cup of oats! I often do this as I’ve found when I pair a few sprouted rolled oats with nuts (read: with protein and healthy fats), I can keep my blood sugar stable.
Wait a minute you might be asking yourself… what are sprouted oats? Sprouted oats are whole grain seeds that have started to germinate, but are harvested earlier than regular oats. The sprouting process activates nutrients in the oats so they are higher in magnesium, protein and free amino acids. (PMID: 32932082)
Recipe for Honey Miso Granola and Brown Butter Cinnamon up on the Color Club.
If you make this recipe (or ANY of my recipes!), I’d love nothing more than to hear how it turned out and any feedback you have! Comment below or on the recipe in the Color Club, and if you are on IG, tag me @sonjakmanning.
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Chefs kisses,
Sonja