Taco-Filled Peppers

The Relief Society sisters brought a meal to a young mother in the ward this week, and I contributed the funeral potatoes, because of course I did. The week was a fall week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan, 20, is in the Philippines on his mission. He sends emails on Mondays. I read them on Mondays. The day is now structured around his email. Olivia is 18, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason, 16, is in Brazil on his mission. His weekly emails are short and full of jokes. He does not write much about the work. He writes about the food. Lily is 14, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 11, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I do not preach in this blog. I never have. My faith is in here the way air is in a room — invisible, essential, not discussed. I am still a Latter-day Saint. I am also a woman who has sat in front of a casket the size of a bread box. I do not see those two things as contradictions, but I do not pretend they sit easily together either. The bench in the chapel where I sit on Sunday is the same bench. The woman is not. The faith makes room for the woman. That is what I have learned to ask of it.

The recipe of the week was enchilada assembly line, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. I taught a freezer meal class this week and someone cried at the cost-per-serving column on the handout. I took the cry as a compliment. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The week ends the way most of them do — with a labeled bag, a tomorrow, a kitchen light I leave on for no one in particular, and a quiet that holds.

The enchilada assembly line got the spotlight this week, but it was the Taco-Filled Peppers that anchored the freezer—twenty-eight bags labeled and stacked by Sunday evening, the kind of quiet victory that makes the whole week feel manageable before it even begins. This is the recipe I hand to people at my freezer meal class when they ask where to start: simple enough to teach, satisfying enough to make again, and the kind of thing Brandon will chop peppers for without being asked twice.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 large bell peppers (any color), tops cut off and seeded
1 lb lean ground beef
1 packet (1 oz) taco seasoning
1/2 cup water
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 can (10 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained
1 1/2 cups cooked white or brown rice
1 1/2 cups shredded Mexican-blend cheese, divided
Sour cream and salsa, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Prep the peppers. Preheat oven to 375°F. Slice the tops off the bell peppers, remove seeds and membranes, and arrange cut-side up in a 9x13-inch baking dish. Set aside.
Brown the beef. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef until no pink remains, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess fat.
Season and simmer. Add taco seasoning and water to the skillet. Stir to combine and simmer for 2–3 minutes until the liquid is mostly absorbed.
Build the filling. Stir in the black beans, corn, diced tomatoes with chiles, and cooked rice. Mix well and remove from heat. Fold in 3/4 cup of the shredded cheese.
Fill and top. Spoon the filling evenly into each pepper, pressing gently to pack. Top each pepper with the remaining 3/4 cup of shredded cheese.
Bake. Cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 10 minutes, until peppers are tender and cheese is bubbly and lightly golden.
Serve. Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Offer sour cream and salsa on the side if desired.

Freezer Instructions: Prepare filling and stuff peppers as directed but do not bake. Place filled peppers on a parchment-lined sheet pan and freeze until solid, about 2 hours. Transfer to labeled freezer bags. To reheat: thaw overnight in refrigerator and bake as directed, adding 10 minutes to covered bake time if still cold.

Nutrition (per serving)

Taco-Filled Peppers — The Assembly Line That Feeds the Week