Food on Friday: Stuffed Bell Peppers

Last weekend my cousin gave me some green bell peppers from her garden. I was thrilled because one of my favorite dishes is stuffed bell peppers.

Here's the recipe.

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Stuffed Bell Peppers

1/2 lb ground beef
1 c cooked rice
1/2 tsp salt
a dash of ground black pepper
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp chopped onion
1 egg
1 8oz can tomato sauce
2-3 bell peppers (I use green, but other colors are great too!)
2-4 slices of cheese (I like colby jack, but use whatever kind you like.)

Cut the tops and stems off of the bell peppers, clean the seeds out of the insides, and then blanch (or immerse in boiling water) for 5 minutes. In a medium frying pan, cook ground beef and onions. Add salt, pepper, rice, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, and egg, and heat together for 1-2 minutes. In a small baking pan (try an 8" cake pan or something similar), place bell peppers upright and fill with rice mixture. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Remove and while still hot cover tops of stuffed peppers with cheese slices. Enjoy!
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The egg is suprisingly important in this recipe. It's what holds the rice and rice mixture together inside the pepper (and how I made such a pretty picture of it sliced in half).

As I was looking in my fridge, I realized that I didn't have as much ground beef as I thought I did, but I also noticed I had some black beans that needed to get used up. So I made this vegetarian style and used the black beans instead of all that ground beef.

Note: To make this vegan, try substituting beans (any kind you want) for the meat. In place of the egg, mix 1 tsp ground flax seed + 3 tsp water and let sit until gelatinous, then add to rice mixture. And hold off on the cheese. Its still scrumptious that way too!

Mmm... Yummy.

And just for fun (because he's way more fun than any toy ever), here's my little Graham cracker. :)