Stuffed Peppers

I started making this without a recipe a few years back and my husband loves them. I've slowly perfected my own version for our family and maybe you can do the same for yours. These are pretty healthy and they make a wonderful vegetarian meal as well. This is also another opportunity to sneak in some pureed veggies....I use zucchini in this recipe. I still don't have a written recipe so here's my best guesstimate on measurements. =0)

What's great about these is that they can be incredibly healthy....whole grains from the brown rice and packed with vitamins from the peppers, zucchini, and cooked tomatoes.

6 bell peppers

2 c cooked brown rice

2 c cooked ground Italian sausage or ground beef or ground turkey, or chopped portobello mushrooms

1-2 c pasta sauce (depends how saucy you like it)

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp anise seed

optional: 1/2 pureed roasted peppers and 1 c pureed zucchini or less

1 can tomato soup

1 c milk

Wash and cut the tops off the bell peppers. Remove seeds and membrane. Set in a sprayed glass deep baking dish. In a bowl, mix together tomato soup and milk and set aside. Mix the remaining ingredients together and spoon mixture into bell peppers. Pour tomato soup mixture over peppers. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for about 45 min. or until peppers are cooked through and tops are browned. Serve with sour cream.

Variations:

~ make it vegetarian with mushrooms instead of meat or poultry. IF you use mushrooms instead of meat, I would use a little more rice because the mushrooms really cook down. Probably an extra cup of rice.

~ omit the tomato soup and milk sauce

~ omit the pureed veggies if you don't have them but you'll need to add about a cup of extra pasta sauce

~ use white rice instead of brown

These would probably make a great freezer meal as well.

This is a great one dish meal since it's packed with grains and veggies. But you could always serve it with a nice salad.

Also, I don't use green bell peppers because they are harder to digest. A green bell pepper is an unripe pepper. They turn yellow, orange, and red when they are ripe.