Hot Stuff

On Saturday we went to Sam's Club and I bought a 6 pack of beautifully colorful bell peppers.  Now, 6 is kinda a lot of peppers, but I like to have them on hand to through into pasta, salads, eggs, etc.  Fast forward to Tuesday when I picked up my produce basket.  It is like Christmas day going through the basket and to my surprise (and dismay) there were 7 beautiful bell peppers in it.  holy. crap.  What is a girl to do with 13 bell peppers!!! I don't even like them that much.  They make me sooo burpy (more than usual :) ).  Luckily, I split my basket with a friend at school, so that got rid of 4 of the bell peppers. What to do with the rest of them?? Make this:

Stuffed Bell Peppers (adapted from 3-4 recipes I looked at from allrecipes.com) :

4 green bell peppers (or any color I guess. Mine were huge so I only used 4, but if you have smaller ones you could probably fill 5-6)
1 pound ground beef (I think turkey would be really good too)
1 cup cooked rice (the original recipe I looked at said 1/2 uncooked rice which made me excited because I thought "oh good, it will just bake in the oven and be so fast" wrong.  The first step is to cook the rice.  So, I thought I would be upfront about the rice and its preparation. )
1 onion, diced
1 can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
mozzarella cheese, one handful and another handful.

Preheat oven to 400. (cook the rice if you haven't already)

Slice off the top of the peppers and pull out the seeds and ribs.  Place in a baking dish that has a little bit of olive oil at the bottom to keep them from sticking.

Saute onions in a pan with olive oil for a few minutes.  Add ground beef and cook until brown.  Drain. stir in the rest of the ingredients and the rice, except the mozzarella cheese.  Once it is all combined, toss in a handful of the cheese.  (I didn't originally do this when I made them yesterday, but I wish that I had.)  Stuff into hollowed out peppers.  Cover and bake for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven, uncover, and generously apply a layer of mozzarella cheese on the top.  Bake for 5 more minutes, or until cheese is melted. They are super filling and so delicious.  But watch out for the pepper burps! Enjoy!
                                         

Before going in the oven

Hot out of the oven