Recipe--Green Pepper Heaven

Delicious recipes including green peppers are a must if your garden is like ours this time of year. The green peppers are really producing. It's almost as if they know that the first frost will be here soon, so they are going to dazzle us before they die.

Peppers are relatively easy to grow, so if you are a beginning gardener, try green peppers. California Wonder is a good old stand-by. Don't stick to just green peppers either. There are 100's of pepper varieties to choose from. We have planted yellow, chocolate (no, just the color, not the taste of chocolate..LOL) and purple, as well as some of the hot peppers.

If you leave the green peppers on the plant, they will begin to turn red. These are sweeter and have a different texture. Salads and salsa are so pretty with the green and red mixed peppers.

Recipe--Stuffed Green Peppers

We like the peppers stuffed with or without the meat using corn or peas or more veggies from the garden.

Place 6 peppers (either a full-sized pepper with the tops off and seeds cleaned out or a cleaned pepper cut in half) in a micro-waveable 8" x 8 " dish. (Yes,this is so much easier than boiling them for 5 minutes in boiling water, I think.) Salt the inside of the peppers. Cook the peppers in the microwave for 3-4 minutes depending on how thick the wall is. They need to be hot.

Prepare a cup of rice--instant, brown, whatever your family prefers.

Brown one pound of ground beef with onions in a large skillet. Drain. Return to the skillet.

Add rice and 3/4 can of diced tomatoes with onion and green peppers including juice. You may add salt and garlic to taste. Heat through.

Stuff peppers with meat mixture. Top with remaining tomatoes and juice. Return to microwave and cook covered 10-12 minutes or bake in 350 degree oven, covered, for 45 minutes. Remove foil from oven baked peppers, and cook 10-15 minutes longer.

Remove from heat and sprinkle tops with cheese. No need to return the peppers to the heat as the cheese will melt.

I let the dish of peppers set for five minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Garden Check Up

Checking in on the progress of our veggie and fruit production. Yes, I have to include fruit because the strawberries are absolutely going bananas! In our patch that we planted Spring 2008, this year we are taking out 12-15 quarts of berries every other day. AND they are nice sized berries, and may I add, delicious. The neighbors and our kids love them too. Yes, we are sharing rather than making jam or freezing. Check out my strawberry pie recipe in an earlier blog if you are in the midst of berry season.

The following is my husband's garden report in a nutshell:
Have bibb and romaine lettuce galore, but with the heat it is starting to bolt.

The first sweet corn I had planned on having by 4th of July tassled out at 2 feet, so it will not have ears worth a darn. It has been too cold this spring and early summer.

I planted tomato seed the end of April and those plants are just as big as the plants I bought in May. Go figure.

I have 36 pepper plants. They are doing real well in the heat-- yellow, red, purple, brown, green.

We have eaten all the broccoli up. Now waiting on side shoots to grow out. Cabbage is just heading up. Cauliflower is still a ways off.

Beans aren't growing worth a darn, but the onions are growing great.

Watermelon and cantaloupe are just limping along.

We have little zucchini forming on the plants.

Pumpkins are going great. We have a new one this year called Knucklehead. It has warts all over it. We haven't told the grandkids yet, so that will be a surprise. Maybe they can win the Ugliest Pumpkin award at the Harvest Festival this year.

That's the run down on the garden at this point. Summer is half over. Hope your gardens are growing well. Leave a comment and let me know how you are doing. Thanks.