Stuffed Peppers and the last of the garden

So I’m in Maine right now but thanks to the nifty new “post ahead” feature in blogger I was able to set this up to post while I was gone! Neat!

My garden this year was pathetic. Seriously. In May/June I had such grand schemes. I watered every day, weeded with no mercy, and was completely babying all of the seeds I planted. And this year I planted a lot of seeds. But then at the end of June I got pregnant. And by mid-July I was asleep/throwing up/in migrane hell all the time. By now even my houseplants are looking pretty worse for wear. So much for my grand schemes…

Anyways this past weekend we pulled everything out – it was all overgrown and weedy and just a mess. But I did manage to salvage a bouquet of Dahlias:



And enough peppers to make our annual “end of the garden” stuffed pepper feast.

So very tasty! Here’s what I did (recipe from Carolyn and then tweaked a bit):

Stuffed Peppers

Four small or two big green peppers, or Hungarian wax, or yellow, or whatever you have growing: slice, clean seeds and cut ribs out and set aside
1-2 extra peppers chopped up for the filling – I used a hot pepper in addition to a green one
1 lb. ground beef (ground round is fine)
½ cup-ish of uncooked white rice (just eyeball it)
Shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 onion, shopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
salt
pepper
paprika
all purpose seasoning
can of campbells tomato soup
8oz can of tomato sauce


mix meat, rice, chopped pepper, cheese, onion, garlic, parsley, and seasonings in a bowl:

stuff the meat/rice/ingredient balls into the peppers, but don't pound it in, make it fluffy
put the peppers in big soup pot
put any extra filling around the peppers in the pot. I used it to make my peppers stand up
put a blob of tomato soup on each pepper
add the can of tomato sauce to the rest of the tomato soup
pour around the peppers:

bring up to a bubble over low heat (you don’t want to burn the meat or peppers to the bottom of the pan!)
put lid on
cook for about 45 minutes to an hour

check while cooking, re-pour on soup to keep moist
during the last 5-10 min of cooking add more shredded cheese to the top of each pepper and let it melt.

So tasty!!!!