Loaded Potato Stuffed Bell Peppers

Well here is Jayme's post #1.  Kalyn and I have been discussing doing this for awhile now, since we usually drool over each others pictures of meals and treats.  I hope to bring some pretty fabulous ideas to this blog so that our friends out there can be inspired, or at least entertained :-).  

Tonight I made some pretty interesting stuffed peppers.  My husband and I are about to move, so my fridge/pantry is becoming meager at best.  Finding I had a ridiculously large red bell pepper, potatoes, a few pieces of bacon, and some broccoli, I went to work!  Don't you love improvising with random ingredients?

I started by blanching the halved pepper for about 5 minutes (per instructions from an online resource).  This worked well, preventing that oh so terrible cold crunchy texture.

The filling was more about what was in my fridge than any recipe I could find, thus allowing me to call this my recipe :-).  I peeled and boiled 3 medium sized potatoes just as I would to make normal mashed potatoes.  After this I added the standard milk and butter and salt and pepper to taste.  I had some cream cheese left over (about 2 Tbsp), which gave a wonderful creamy-ness to my plain ole mashers...I think I will continue to do this in the future!

Next was the broccoli.  I had a small amount from the farmers market, so I cut it up (including the stem, don't waste it) and again, boiled it.  I was looking to cook it through some so it would be soft in my filling.  After it was done, I added it to my potatoes.

You gotta have cheese, so I diced up the remaining amount of a mild cheddar brick we had.  I put a handful in the filling and saved another handful for the top.

Any of you ladies out there with a husband at home knows that any recipe will instantly be a winner if you add bacon.  I only had a few stripes left, so I fried it up, crumbled it, and like the cheese, put half in the filling and saved half for the top.

So there you have it, fill the peppers with the potato mixture, put the cheese and bacon on top, and pop it in the oven until the cheese is wonderfully melted (I would give you a time and temp, but frankly I don't remember!).  It was a winner in my house, with the husband adding a bit of ground beef would have made it perfect!  I guess you can already tell I will be re-posting a meatier version for the men out there at some point, but overall, a really nice dinner!