Quarantummy: Stuffed bell peppers

I had been dreaming about stuffed bell peppers. For some reason, I woke up thinking about them, making them, eating them.

Except I had no bell peppers.

I had been buying fruits and vegetables from a neighbor, so I decided to ask if she had any bell peppers. Enthusiastically she said, “Yes, we still have. It’s for free, you may pick them up here.”

So my dream of stuffed bell peppers was to be a reality!

Ingredients:

• Bell peppers – Look for nice big ones that you can cut in half. They’ll basically be cups holding meat, egg and cheese. Make sure to remove the seeds and the stem. Try to keep the shape.
• Ground meat – I used pork.
• Onions – peeled and chopped
• Cheese – preferably something melty
• Eggs
• Olive oil or margarine
• Salt
• Pepper
• Tarragon

A word of warning: This is a rather fussy dish, as there are quite a few steps.

Procedure:

1. In a pan, heat oil. Add onion and saute for about two minutes. Add ground meat.

2. Cook the ground meat until brown. Season with salt, pepper and tarragon, or your preferred herbs.

3. In a shallow pan, bring water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the halved bell peppers. Let them sit in the boiling water for five to ten minutes. You’ll know they’ve boiled long enough when they start to soften. When they’re ready, remove them from the pan, shaking off excess water.

4. Drizzle some olive oil in a baking dish. Alternately, you can also rub it with butter or margarine. Place the bell peppers in the baking dish. Pre-heat your oven.

5. In a bowl, beat eggs. I started with two, but I ended up adding a third one later on.

6. Carefully spoon the ground meat into the bell peppers. When each bell pepper is full, spoon beaten egg into each pepper. Be careful as the egg will probably spill out of the pepper. Top with cheese.

7. Bake in the oven or toaster for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how melty you want the cheese to be. If cooking in a microwave, cook on medium heat for five to 10 minutes, or until the egg is cooked, then two minutes on high heat just to melt the cheese.

It smells so good! It goes great with rice or bread. For more color, you could also add carrots to the ground meat. For carbs, you can add diced potatoes instead of carrots. You can also experiment with different kinds of cheese.