Halloween Dinner: Stuffed Jack-O-Peppers

Is everyone recovering from Halloween?  Who ate too much candy?  You can be honest!  Even if you found that you indulged in one too many of your favorite treats, don’t dwell on it and let it ruin the rest of your week.  Pick right back up where you were!  One cheat day is better than four cheat days, right?

That being said, this year I did not have as much candy as I have eaten in past years.  I didn’t eat any at the office, and I only ate two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (my guilty pleasure).  And aside from some beers, the rest of the night wasn’t too bad!  Tim and I went to Slesh & Will’s apartment for a little Halloween dinner, and a Halloween dinner we made!

Introducing:  Jack-O-Peppers!

How freaking adorable are these?!  I got the idea from this recipe, but we adapted it to be our own.

Stuffed Jack-O-Peppers

Ingredients

• 4 orange bell peppers
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 1 small tomato, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt, pepper, and other spices as desired
• Tomato sauce (amount of choice)
• BBQ sauce (amount of choice) — we used Stubb’s Original
• Shredded cheese (amount of choice)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease an 8×8 baking dish.
3. Lightly mix together the ground beef, egg, onion, tomato, garlic, spices, and BBQ sauce in a bowl.
4. Wash the peppers and cut jack-o’-lantern faces into the peppers with a sharp paring knife.
5. Slice off the tops of the peppers, and scoop out the seeds and cores.
6. Stuff the peppers lightly with the beef stuffing, and place them into the prepared baking dish so they lean against each other.
7. Bake in the preheated oven until the peppers are tender and the stuffing is cooked through and juicy, about 1 hour (took us a little more).
8. Once out of the oven, sprinkle with cheese and serve.

The BBQ sauce added a lot of yummy flavor to this dish, and it was nice to actually use ground beef instead of ground turkey for once.  Was really good, and really filling, and we got in some greens on the side.  Don’t you just love that pepper’s little face?  I feel like this one is the reject child or something.  He’s too cute.

With dinner, we enjoyed some pumpkin brewskis.  Tim and I stopped at The Craft Beer Cellar on our way over to Slesh & Will’s, and brought over an assortment of pumpkin flavored 40 oz. beers in honor of the holiday.

While we waited for the peppers to cook, we conducted our own beer tasting in the kitchen.  If I had to rate these beers (1, 2, 3, 4 from left to right) in order of my most favorite to least favorite… it would be 2, 3, 4, 1.  OR 3, 2, 4, 1.  I really liked both the Opa Opa and the CBC Great Pumpkin Ale pretty equally.  So fun and festive!

And then finally, a holiday wouldn’t be a holiday without a dessert.  Slesh prepared a Paleo pie crust from the night before (adapted from this recipe)  and we made a no bake pumpkin pie (1 cup pumpkin + 1 cup plain Greek yogurt + 1 package fat-free sugar-free butterscotch pudding mix + pumpkin pie spice).  We didn’t have it in the fridge long enough so it was kind of more pudding like than it was supposed to be, but that’s okay.  It still tasted delicious.

Rest of the night was spent watching Simpsons Halloween episodes and catching up.

P.S.  Will wore his Ghostbusters costume the entire night.  So funny.

Tell me about your Halloweens!  Does anyone have any fun or cute healthy-ish Halloween recipes to share??

I’m off to FINALLY get a haircut… it’s long overdue.  Have a great night, friends!