What to do with Banana Peppers

(First off sorry for the blogging delay. Lost my mojo for a few days. I know, no excuses. Geez, I'm not even on vacation yet. I hope to be back with the program now. Thanks for the kick in the pants blue violet!)

Back to the topic...

You may remember several weeks ago I had the weekend project of planting my spring flowers. Along with them I also planted a few banana pepper plants.

I’ve never done any gardening beyond herbs. This was my first adventure into a food item. I’m not sure what possessed me to buy pepper plants. I guess I needed something to fill the blank wall on the back of the house and couldn’t find the right flower. I didn’t want to try tomatoes since I’m not overly fond of them and I didn’t want a kitchen full of something that would go to waste.

Well, they grew a lot better than I anticipated.

Now what do I do with a kitchen full of peppers.

Let me just tell you there are not that many recipes for banana peppers. Most of them are variations on how to pickle them. I might end up doing that next but for starters, I went with stuffed peppers.

I found a recipe on cooks.com and then I changed it. I do that to recipes. …add a little more of things I like… omit things I don’t really care for ...Ta Da. New recipe. So here’s the recipe I ended up using.

1 small chopped tomato (I know, I said I’m not fond of them but I like to cook with them)
1 ½ cups cheddar cheese
½ lb. sweet sausage cooked
¼ lb. of cooked crumbled bacon
8-10 slices of un-cooked bacon
8 –10 banana peppers (hot or sweet)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Slice the peppers length wise and clean out the seeds.

In a bowl mix together the cooked sausage, cooked bacon, tomato and cheese.

Stuff each pepper as full as possible then wrap with a slice of bacon and place in a baking dish.

Place the dish in the oven for 25-35 minutes or until bacon is cooked.

They were really yummy as an appetizer.

To use up the left overs the next morning, we made our version of an “Italian breakfast”. (It’s a dish that is served at a local restaurant that we make here at home occasionally). Take the leftover cooked (stuffed) peppers and slice. Toss the peppers and all their fillings into a skillet with some scrambled eggs and sauté. You can also add some pepperoni, green or red peppers and onion if you like. Top with some more cheese.

It looks like a mess but it sure is good!

Do you have any other ideas for banana peppers???