Recipe: "Carved Pumpkin" Stuffed Pepper

If you saw the “Carved Pumpkin” stuffed peppers photo in the October Edition of Savor Your Health e-newsletter, you will want to try this recipe.  If you haven’t subscribed yet to Savor Your Health, a monthly healthy living e-newsletter, enter your email address in the sidebar sign-up form.

Ingredients

•  4-6 sweet bell peppers

Filling

• Spoonful of Bacon Fat, Ghee or Butter
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 carrots shredded fine
• 1 stalk celery diced fine
• 1 small zucchini or preferred squash shred fine
• Several large handfuls of spinach
• 1 lb pork sausage
• 1 egg
• 2-3 t rubbed sage
• 1 t salt
• ½ t pepper
• ½ t ground mustard or 1 T stone ground prepared mustard
• 2 T Worchester Sauce
• ½-1 c cooked grain, optional
•  Preheat Oven to 350F

Preheat Oven to 350F

In a skillet over medium-high heat, sauté the onion, carrots and celery in bacon fat until crisp tender.  Add zucchini and spinach.  Cook until the spinach is wilted.  Allow the veggies to cool.  They do not need to be room temperature, but not so hot as too cook the sausage in the next step.

In a large bowl, mix pork sausage, egg, sage, salt, pepper, mustard, Worchester sauce, grain and vegetables.  Mix thoroughly.

Cut tops off sweet bell peppers and clean out pepper ribs. Pack filling into peppers.  Using a sharp paring knife or pumpkin carving tools, carve faces into the sweet peppers. Replace pepper tops.

In a shallow baking dish, bake at 350F until a meat thermometer registers filling is done. From www.grassfedcooking.com cook pork until it is between 145F-160F.  The USDA recommends cooking pork until it is 160F.