What To Do With These Colorful Peppers

A big package of mini peppers has lots of possibilities.

Have you noticed those big packages of brightly colored red, yellow and orange mini sweet peppers in the produce department?  A couple years ago Marianne bought one of those bags at Costco up in Burlington, WA while we were visiting.  I wondered at the time how she was going to use all those pretty peppers up and also if they were really spicy hot.  I found out they are a type of sweet pepper and very tasty.  Bob loved to get a few out for snacking and before the week was out the bag was gone!  Bob would eat them whole without even getting the seeds out.  Actually they have very few seeds in them and are very crunchy and a refreshing treat.

Raw peppers stuffed with cream cheese.

Lately I have been seeing bags of these peppers in most produce departments of grocery stores wherever I have been ( like Phoenix, San Antonio, Laramie, Casper, Elko, etc.) Well, maybe not Bella's Market in Walden, but I haven't been in there for almost 6 months, so who knows!

When Carla and JJ were here in Phoenix with us in April we got a bag of these peppers and discovered a lot of ways to get them used up besides just eating them raw in salads and whole for snacks.

 Carla loved doing them on grill and I loved how they tasted.  She halved them, cleaned the seeds out, brushed them with olive oil sprinkled on some sea salt and grilled them for maybe 10 minutes.  Yummmmm!

These grilled peppers go great with steak on the grill.

We also came up with a stuffed mini pepper that cooks in about 10 minutes or less in the microwave.  Use your favorite stuffed pepper recipe and put about meatball sized amounts in each half of your mini peppers.  I'm thinking of doing a filling with Mexican spices and a little cheese on top.  Bake about 10 minutes in a 400 degree oven, toaster oven or maybe a little shorter time in the microwave.

My camera phone isn't doing well in this heat I guess.  These are the stuffed peppers.

A blurry picture of our stuffed mini peppers with cheese on top.  They were delicious.

 My students in Wendover used to do cheese stuffed long green mildly hot peppers (can't remember the name) on the grill.  So here they are done with the mini peppers.  Stuff with Queso Fresca cheese and grill for about 8-10 minutes.  Very yummy.

Cheese stuffed peppers and just plain ones on the grill.

This is the favorite cheese of many of my Wendover students.

Another snack option is the tiny pepper halves stuffed with cream cheese.  Very tasty!

Ranchero cheese stuffed peppers ready for the grill.

Yummy grilled cheese peppers have Bob's seal of approval.

By the way, if you have leftover filling from the stuffed peppers you might try making mini meatloaves in a muffin tin and stick a cube of cheese in the center of each little loaf.  bake them for about 20 minutes in the oven.

Leftover meat stuffing for peppers makes great mini meat loaves made in a muffin tin.  They freeze well for later meals.

Mushrooms, steak and peppers done on the grill.

Hmmmm!  I wonder what to try next.....  I just saw a bit on TV about grilling a whole head of Romaine lettuce and that is the hottest trend today.  I think I have to try that one!