I was recently made a gift of about seven small to medium green peppers from my neighbors garden.  It is the end of the season and he had too many for just himself.

Since I now have a teenager living with me and her father, I decided to make good use of these and prepared some stuffed peppers for the freezer to be cooked later.

Then I went on to make Green Pepper Soup.

Ingredients

• 7 small to medium green peppers
• 3-4 pounds ground beef
• 1-1/2 cups instand rice
• 1 large can of tomato soup
• seasonings to taste
• salt and pepper

Cut the tops off the green peppers and remove seed from inside of the peppers.  Trim any extra white seams from inside the green peppers

Stuffed Peppers

Combine half of the ground beef with about half of the instant rice and seasonings to taste.  Stuff your prepare peppers to the top.

At this point I placed my stuffed peppers into a Tupperware™ Square Keeper and stored them in the freezer for use at another time.

If I were going to use them for dinner I would have placed them into a deep baking casserole and covered them with the tomato soup and a squirt or two of ketchup.  The ketchup adds just a little extra flavor.  Bake the casserole at 350° for approximately an hour. 

Serve these peppers with a fresh loaf of bread or you can now freeze them in individual containers for use later.  They make excellent lunches for those who are fortunate enough to have microwaves at the office.

Stuffed Pepper Soup

Take the second half of the ground beef and prepare it in a soup pot as if you were making chili con carne.  Slice up the remaining green pepper in strips and cut strips in half.  Make these cuts bigger than if you were chopping for a chili base.  Take the tops that you cut off and chop these to approximately the same size as your pepper.  Add green pepper to the ground beef mixture and add spices.

I use onion powder and garlic powder along with some parsley, salt and pepper.

Cook until ground meat is browned.  Add the can of tomato soup to the mixture along with a can of water.  Bring the soup to a boil.  Add about 3/4 cup of instant rice and turn down to simmer.  I like to put a squirt or 2 of ketchup into the soup for added flavor.