A Favorite Idea for Peppers

It seems as if all of our peppers struggle mightily during the long summer days, wilting and not producing much at all.  As the days grow shorter and the temps fall off a bit, the peppers catch a second wind.  Suddenly, we are awash in peppers.  We're pickling (by lacto-fermentation) quart after quart of banana peppers.  We brought several baskets of banana peppers to give away at church as everyone likes pickling them.  We're dehydrating jalapenos and habaneros and grinding them into pepper.  We're making poppers with jalapenos and hot banana peppers.  We're dicing and freezing Anaheim peppers that Tricia uses to cook with.  In fact, the wife told me, "There's no sense in planting bell peppers anymore.  They haven't been producing well and Anaheims are better."

And then I went and checked on the bell peppers and there was a half dozen of them on the little bell pepper plant.  Well, what do you know?  They must have heard that they were fixing to be stricken from the planting rotation and quickly produced to save their spot.

 I brought them inside and we promptly cleaned them up and cored them.  We had an idea for supper tonight - something we hadn't done in a while: Stuffed Bell Peppers!  Tricia has a quick recipe that she puts together.  It's basically dirty rice, with a little tomato sauce added and then topped off with cheese, put in a baking pan and toss in the oven for a spell.  Some people like them topped with tomato paste/sauce, but we like cheese on top.  They turned out so good, we brought a couple to our son, Russ, who lives in a town about 10 miles away.  Russ loves peppers.  He said they are his favorite vegetable in the garden.

As is often the case, we had too much stuffing and not enough bell peppers.  So we did what anybody would do.  We made do with what we had on hand.  We have an abundance of beautiful Anaheim peppers on hand.  Anaheims will not stand up, so I just sliced them in half, making something sort of like a boat.  We spooned the stuffing into the Anaheim boats.  While bell peppers are sweet, Anaheims have a little heat, but not much.  Mild, I would call them.

The last few nights, the temperatures have dipped into the mid-30's.  The peppers will continue to produce until the freeze gets 'em.  For right now, we're still picking and finding delicious things to do with them.