Leftover special - stuffed green peppers

As promised, I will share the yummy stuffed green peppers we made yesterday with all our leftovers.

We started by cutting the top off the green pepper and pulling all the insides and seeds out.  Then we places some water in the bottom of the dish, placed the cover on and let them steam in the microwave.  I think we totaled somewhere over 5 min, but we just checked them along the way to make sure they were softening but still keeping a little crisp.

When we were happy with the amount of steaming ( the skin just starting to wrinkle but able to hold up to filling and leaving room to soften in the oven later) we salt and peppered the inside of each pepper.

Next, We started layering the filling.  We used leftover ground beef sautéed with onions (the filling for our calzones 2 days before).  We also had mozzarella from that meal and we cut that into cubes and layered that also.

We also layered in some chopped mushrooms and, for myself and 2YO just to add extra veggies, a bit of broccoli/cauliflower purée that my 5mo didn't end up eating.

We then heaped on spaghetti sauce with peppers and onions. We didn't have much room, but I would recommend more sauce layered in along the way. We were winging it and ended up pouring a little sauce over them at the end.

We had three thick slices of mozzarella that we placed on the top of each pepper. We added a last dash of salt and pepper here as we'll.

We placed the saved caps back on the peppers.

We placed it in the oven at 350. Here's where I, once again, can't give the best directions. I have no idea how long we had those in the oven. I believe it was about 20 minutes but can't say for sure because I was putting the baby to sleep, watching 2YO play outside with Grandpa, etc... :). We basically just wanted the peppers to cook a bit more, the cheese to melt, and everything else to heat up. Since everything was already cooked we just need to heat it all up.

When we thought they were done we turned it to broil to give the tops this awesome color.

Tada! Finished product!

And a quick view of the middle from the pepper that 2YO and I shared. Can you believe what a good eater he is!?! I can say I would have been that good with a meal like this until my teens!

Well, there it is - sorry about the lack of detail. Anything goes, really. Almost any ingredients and the cooking time is a personal preference also.