Stuffed peppers and cooked polenta

If you live around the same latitude as us, summer days are coming to an end. The night has been falling earlier and earlier, things are getting colder, and the time has come to pick the last things from the garden and to prepare them for winter. To fight off the new chill, we decided to cook something warm and hearty. Today’s dish is vegan stuffed peppers in a tomato sauce, guaranteed to give you that lovely warm and full feeling! As a side dish, we decided to make polenta. But rather than just serving it as is, we baked it with roasted onions to make it extra yummy!

Today, we had onions everywhere in our meal! In the pepper filling, in the sauce, and in the polenta! Besides being incredibly tasty when prepared properly, onions are also incredibly nutritious. In addition to the vitamins and minerals, they also contain other biologically active ingredients such as quercetin, which is an antioxidant, and inulin, a soluble, non-digestible fibre that stimulates the development of healthy gut bacterial flora. It also contains sulphoxoides, which are sulphur compounds that give onions their characteristic odour, and in larger concentrations irritate the eyes and can even have antibacterial effects.


Recipe, price and prepering the lunch

 

Quantity (g or ml)

Price for 4 person (EUR)

Main dish

 

 

Rice

50

0,12

Lentils

50

0,12

Onion

60

0,10

Peppers

500

0,65

Mushrooms

250

0,80

Salt

3

0,00

Olive oil

20

0,12

Sauce

Onion

100

0,16

Sweet peppers

5

0,04

Olive oil

20

0,12

Tomato sauce

500

0,68

Salt

3

0,00

Side dish

Polenta

160

0,16

Onion

70

0,11

Salt

2

0,00

Olive oil

20

0,12

Together

3,28

 

First we cooked the rice and lentils, which would come to be the filling for our peppers. While this was on the stove, we hollowed out our peppers, then sliced up mushrooms and onions. For the sauce, we sautéed onions in olive oil and then added tomato sauce to it. We seasoned it with sweet paprika and salt. We cooked it until it thickened and then took our stick mixer to it to blend the onions in.

When the rice and lentils were half done, we cooked up mushrooms and onions in olive oil. To this, we added the rice and lentils before salting and seasoning our filling. We used our Indian spice blend, but any spice can be used here, depending on the desired flavour.

With the filling prepared, we added it into our peppers and stood them upright on a pan and then covered them in sauce. We put them on a low heat in the oven and allowed them to cook slowly. Once the peppers were cooked, we got our polenta boiling while cooking the last of the onions up in some oil before mixing both together. This mixture was then placed in a baking dish and tossed into the oven for a few minutes until it went crusty. We served the peppers with sauce from the cooking pan and a slice of our yummy and crispy polenta on the side.

We used some vegetables from our garden, so the price of our lunch was very small. To show you the market value though, we have incorporated the price of these items into our calculation.

Even in doing this, our lunch only came out to 3.28€ for four people, which is less than 1€ per person! Though as always, remember that the cost of a meal is dependent upon what is in season at the time!


Nutritional value of our lunch

With lunch consumed quantity

% From daily needs

Energy

502,0

kcal

25,1

Proteins

12,1

g

21,6

Total fats

17,8

g

40,5

Carbohydrates

79,5

g

 

Starch

51,4

g

 

Sugar

9,6

g

 

Fibers

15,2

g

60,9

Calcium (Ca)

77,4

mg

7,7

Iron (Fe)

4,6

mg

46,3

Magnesium (Mg)

113,6

mg

28,4

Phosphorus (P)

301,6

mg

43,1

Potassium (K)

1029,0

mg

51,5

Sodium (Na)

803,1

mg

146

Zinc (Zn)

2,8

mg

28

Copper (Cu)

0,8

mg

86,7

Manganese (Mn)

1,7

mg

71,9

Selenium (Se)

25,3

µg

50,5

Vitamin A

21,5

µg

2,1

Vitamin E

3,5

mg

23,4

Vitamin D

0,1

µg

1,3

Vitamin C

269,1

mg

269,1

Thiamin (B1)

0,5

mg

38,1

Riboflavin (B2)

0,5

mg

34,2

Niacin (B3)

6,6

mg

45,5

Pantothenic acid (B5)

2,2

mg

37,1

Vitamin B6

0,6

mg

42

Folic acid (B9)

184,3

µg

46,1

Vitamin B12

0,1

µg

2,1

Vitamin K

19,8

µg

28,3

 

 

 

 

 

As always, we planned the lunch to cover 25% of the caloric needs of an average person during one day. The lunch was very rich in vitamins and minerals, with most being consumed in ample supply. We got quite a bit of fibre, mainly because of the lentils and polenta. The lentils also gave us a lot of iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium, though we didn’t quite manage to meet our goals on these. We did manage to consume enough selenium and zinc though, and we went wild on vitamin C, getting as much as 270% of our daily needs! This can help out your immune system, which is especially important as the weather begins to change.

For a more accurate view of our calculations or if you have any other questions you can write to us at hungry.pumpkin.blog@gmail.com 🙂 Have a nice week, and enjoy the last of the sun!

The Hungry Pumpkin Team

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