"Healthy" Chiles Poblanos Rellenos

Alot of my friends lately are on a healthy lifestyle kick, and I just wanted to share a good recipe for a mexican dish I sort of creatively made up, well tweaked. Its a new take on Chilles rellenos, you know the heavenly roasted green chile stuffed with tons of oooey gooey buttery melted cheese, and coated in a meringue of perfectly whipped egg mixture, and then fried to a golden brown. My is baked, and packed with veggies, a good and healthy source of protein, and topped with some cheese, but not enough to make your diet take a dive. I promise you will feel really good about this, and maybe even allow yourself dessert. Here's what you'll need.


4-5 Roasted Chiles Polblanos
1 pound of lean ground turkey meat
1 Large yellow Summer squash
2 regular sized zuchinnis
1 medium onion diced
2 fresh minced garlic cloves
2 Jalapenos diced and de-veined (leave this out if you like)
2 cups Shredded Cheese (I used Colby Jack, cheddar is better)
Salt, pepper ground cumin


First off you will want to get started on roasting the chiles. If you are lucky enough to have a gas stove, justcrank the flame up on high and put your chilis righ on the range. You might want to open a window, and have tongs handy, you will hear snaps, crackles, and pops, and there will be a bit of smoking. You will want to char these until they are literally black and look burned. If you still see green, just keep rotating the chiles until you get the burnt effect. If you don't have a gas range just turn use your gas grill, and do the same thing.
THanks to my baby, he went out and grilled these for me, so i could do my THANG in the kitchen when I got home.
Once the chiles are charred you will want to take a plastic bag and immediatly put them in and seal the bag tight for about 20 minutes or until they cool about 95 percent. The steam inside the bag allows the skins to easily separate from the chiles without any tearing, and it practically does the work for you. You should now have something that looks like this.

While the chiles cool lets start on the filling. In a hot pat sautee your onions with a bit of olive oil, and your minced garlic, and then jalapenos. In the mean time, take a cheese shredded and shred your zuchinnis and squash just like you were to shred cheese. Add the veggies to the pan and sautee that mixture as well. Add some salt so that the excess moisture from the veggies is drawn out. Add in your turkey, and incorporate the mixture.
It should look like this.

You will start to notice your mixture take on a liquidy texture, this is good, this means the salt and heat drew out all the water, thus reduring a cooking liquid. Now season your mixture, add in your salt pepper and cumin, and incorporate it well. Now the meat, and veggies will all marry with their wonderful flavors. You will want to cook your mixture all the way down to a brown color by cooking it on medium high hea, as the liquid evaporates lower the heat and make sure you mix it so all sides of the meat are browned.

While your mixture is browning, its time to peel your chilis. Under some warm water gently rub off the charred skins, this should be really easy to do, it shouldnt require and hard peeling.

Be extra careful not to make any holes in the chiles, but occasionaly you will notice it might split, but this is ok, as wel will need to eventually cut a slit to stuff the chilies with our mixture. Next find a place to split the chili and remove all the seeds as best as you can. Once you have them all peeled,and seeds removed put them in a baking dish, and now its time to stuff, and top with cheese.

oh man these look SO GOOD already!

In the oven for about 15 minutes on 375. This is what you get!
A healthy Chile relleno that has layers and layers of sweet flavor from the zuchinni, and squash and carmelized onions, an dthe savory flavor from the turkey meat and cumin. And of course the ooey gooey part of the cheese from the relleno without ALL the guilt.

Poblanos are not spicy so its ok for kids to eat minus the jalepenos, unless your kids are breave litle ones.
Serve this with any kind of rice, or just a side salad, and enjoy.

~April :)

FREEDOM

I felt like writing about an awesome encounter I had with God this morning because we can all use some encourgaement now and again and I thought it be best to share Gods goodness with anyone who stops to read this.

Today started out like any Sunday, getting up , starting the breakfast bustle for my hulk, then getting ready to go to church and serve where we are needed. Slowly things started to take a turn south for me. After battling a nasty cold for the last week I noticed my energy has been low and somehow I began to feel blue. We all battle our demons daily, and we all have our personal struggles we need to over come, and I just felt the weight of condemnation and bills, and stresses weighing me down. When this happens I tend to get really quiet, and just observe. I look at all the happy faces at church, I feel everyones genuine love for one another at church, I just plain feel life is happening right before my eves, I feel left out of life.I truly believe this happens when we leave home and forget to put our armor on. Our Spiritual armor that is.

We finally make it to church, and I just began to greet my friends and church family and things are feeling much better, but I still feel an emptiness I just can't shake. I just couldn't wait for our praise and worship to start. This is a time where its just me and Jesus, and nothing else in the world matters. Its all about Him, and His greatness, and when I don't know what to say or how or what to pray for somehow just praising God makes all those other worries melt away. Well, today, I got an amazing surprise, and God showed up like He never has before at Praise City Church, just to meet ME, or at least it felt that way. Our worship team is awesome and went into a song titled, "Break every Chain". This is a song about the power in the name "Jesus". Ive always known and believed that there is healing power in the name "Jesus". Ive prayed countless prayers, and pleaded in Jesus name, and have sealed many a prayers by this great name, but today was different, today God was THERE! The song went on, and I believed those lyrics, there really is power in the name Jesus to break EVERY CHAIN! Every heavy, binding, linked, tangled, strong, COLD chain there is. NO mater what it is!
In the name of Jesus Heavy chains can broken! Not bent or kind of cracked but BROKEN and severed!

No matter what it is, sin, addiction, shame, guilt, unworthiness, unhappiness, depression, condemnation, judgement, abuse, regret, illness, generational curses, ungodly soul ties, torments, abandonment, the list could go on forever, but no matter what category your chains are linked to, there is nothing too hard for our God to break! We can't do anything when our hands are tied together, or when we are bound in chains, everything is 50 times harder. I believe strongly if we make the decision to come to the cross, and leave it at Gods's feet, He promises to handle what we can't, He even says our yoke is heavy, but His burden is light.


The bible says "If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it." John 14:14.
I began to just break the heaviness of those chains right then and there, and with every chain I declared broken, I heard sounds, I imagined chains falling down, off my feet like shackles, off my wrists like cuffs, off my chest and all of a sudden like a quarter being deposited into a machine, a word came soft but clear to my mind and out of my mouth came "He whom the Son sets free is free INDEED"! At that time if you asked me I could not quote that word, nor would I know where to find it in the bible, but I know I had heard it before, and I know it was Gods very word. I felt such a comfort in repeating those words, as I had just broken several chains, and I felt lighter, and I felt like I could breathe again knowing this day has changed, April 29th, 2012 would no longer go down in history as just another Sunday going through the motions, dragging a heavyness I was NEVER MEANT TO CARRY!

About 30 seconds had passed, and I was still repeating this word during worship,
"He whom the Son sets free is free indeed" all of a sudden our Pastor got up to the Pulpit and he confirmed what I had just repeated. I believe his words were "I think its time we trade that Spirit of heaviness in for the garment of praise, John 8:34 says:


Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

At that very moment I felt like I was the lucky winner, of a Million dollar loto ticket, like the numbers I picked won! I felt like Charlie when he found the golden ticket! I remembered looking around, with a big fat smile on my face and wide eyes! I mean really out of all the verses and stories in the bible, Pastor chose that verse to share! I tell you in the house of God there is no such thing as a coincidence. This was a divine confirmation for ME. I felt when I looked around God says "Yes, you April." I feel so lucky a God SO BIG takes the time to confirm just for me how mighty and powerful He is. If He says its done, then ITS DONE! If HE says I am forgiven I AM FORGIVEN, and today He said I am SET FREE, and today I AM FREE INDEED!
What an awesome day I lived today. Part of this freedom I live out is sharing this with you. The more I say it with my lips, and use this tongue the more real freedom becomes to me. See God forgives, sets free, blots out sin and remembers it no more, and just like that its done, but we humans tend to go back and pick up that shame and condemnation, and tie ourselves up with chains again over and over again. It's a sick cycle, but you know what? God's love is greater, STRONGER, EVEN BIGGER than our circumstance, and His love goes on, and on, and on, and on , and on........

Even when we pick that up again, He will break those chains, over and over and over again.
What a great God we serve. I'd like to extend the opportunity for you to break any chains holding you down.
Enjoy this Song by Jesus Culture
God bless...

~ April