Foodie Friday! Mini Stuffed Peppers

My friend Elisabeth at Life, Love and the Pursuit of . . . made a version of stuffed peppers that made me want to make some of my own. You can find Elisabeth's version with cream cheese, shrimp and bacon here. Now since I'm allergic to shrimp and didn't want to use cream cheese I made my own version. My version of Mini Stuffed Peppers were AMAZING!

To make my version of Mini Stuffed Peppers you will need:

• Mini Sweet Peppers
• Bacon (optional, I made some with and some without the bacon
• White Rice 
• Ground beef
• Smoked paprika
• Salt and Pepper
• Onion

I decided to lightly toast the rice before adding liquid so I put 1 cup rice in a medium size pot and toasted the rice for a couple of minutes. I then added 2 cups water to the rice, turned the heat down and put the lid on the pot to allow the rice to continue cooking.

While the rice was cooking, I went ahead and chopped the onions and prepared the ground beef. I probably used 3/4 of a pound of ground beef to make the peppers. I also cleaned out the peppers. I wasn't sure how I wanted the peppers to look so for some of the peppers, I cut them lengthwise, others I just chopped off the caps. I used a spoon to remove the seeds and ribs of each tiny pepper.

Once the rice was finished, I threw the ground beef and onion into a skillet and seasoned with salt, pepper and Smoked paprika. (Smoked Paprika may very well be my new favorite seasoning I use it with almost EVERY meat.)

After the ground beef was fully cooked, I combined the rice and beef to make the filling for each pepper. I added a liberal amount of filling to each pepper and wrapped a few of them in bacon. I placed the peppers on a baking sheet with a wire rack (so the heat could go all the way around the pepper) and placed them in a 425 degree oven for about 8 minutes. The bacon was cooked and the peppers were soft.

These things came out and were absolutely amazing. I was asked to make more almost immediately. This is definitely a dish I will make again. 

Opening up to hypnosis

   Working where I do has certain benefits including hypnosis.Until this point in my life I've been skeptical of hypnosis. I didn't think it would work. But I'm seeing results in people I work with. This one man, J, went to go see a hypnotist to help with his smoking habit-- after seeing the hypnotist, he quit smoking and hasn't felt the desire to smoke. If it can help someone stop smoking, maybe it can help me with my weight. So I've decided to be open to the idea and make an appointment. I'll let you know what happens. Hopefully the hypnosis will work and I'll finally be on the way to my weight-loss goals.

Talk to you soon!

Amberdenise

"You Brought Me the Wrong Baby"

The first words I ever "heard" from my Aunt Frog were "You brought me the wrong baby!" Probably not the best words a infant should hear from a relative, even if she couldn't understand what that meant. In June 1982, my aunt came to visit my mother and me in the hospital. I'm not sure exactly how old I was at the time but I was probably a few days old. Mom had gone through the trauma of a cesarean and a stroke so she wasn't really coherent when her little sister came to visit.

When Aunt Frog asked to see the Puckett baby, she was not expecting me. When the nurse brought me out to her she looked at me and said, “You brought me the wrong baby. I’m here for the black baby.” Apparently at the time I was born, there were NO black babies at St. Mary’s Medical Center. My aunt had automatically assumed that since my father was black, I would be also. However, the paleness of my mother was a little bit stronger than the dark hues of my father.

"You brought me the wrong baby!" Even though it was many years after Aunt Frog uttered those words and even though I know I didn't understand them when she said them, that's how I have felt off and on my whole life. I've always been "trapped" between two worlds and not really sure how to get them to mesh together. I could be one way with my dad's family, but another with my mom's. As a kid it was really confusing for me. It still is.

I always felt like the "wrong" person. I didn't feel like I could be myself. I wanted to fit in and being biracial really wasn't the way to go back in the 80's and 90's. It wasn't until recently that I have started to feel like both sides of me are being to merge into WHO I am.

More to come. . .

30 Days of Me: an Overview

I started doing this Challenge a few years ago and NEVER finished it. I thought that since I'm revamping my blogs into one blog I would try it again. Maybe this time I'll get through the entire challenge. (these may not happen every day)

Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself

Day 02- The meaning behind your Blog name

Day 03- A picture of you and your friends

Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn't have

Day 05- A picture of somewhere you've been

Day 06- Favorite super hero and why

Day 07- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you

Day 08- Short term goals for this month and why

Day 09- Something you’re proud of in the past few days

Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad

Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends

Day 12- How you found out about Blogger and why you made one

Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you recently

Day 14- A picture of you and your family

Day 15- Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play

Day 16- Another picture of yourself

Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why

Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have

Day 19- Nicknames you have; why do you have them

Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future

Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy

Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else

Day 23- Something you crave for a lot

Day 24- A letter to your parents

Day 25- What I would find in your bag

Day 26- What you think about your friends

Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge

Day 28- A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?

Day 29- In this past month, what have you learned

Day 30- Your favorite song.

This is going to be fun. :O)

Welcome

Welcome to Learning to be ADP. This blog is actually a combination of three blogs I was doing. I sat down and realized that Who is ADP, A Journey to ONE-derland and Becoming the Father's Daughter were all about the same thing-- me discovering who I am and becoming the best woman I can. Several of the post you will see (at least at first) will be post that I am moving over here from one of the other blogs and eventually the other blogs will shut down.

See you soon!