Oh, The Pressure . . .

Due to the extreme pressure put on me by many readers' requests (Jim's), I am hereby publishing my new, improved stuffed pepper filling I recently wrote about. Feel free, dear cookers, to modify the recipe to suit your own tastes. Just be sure to give me full credit for all compliments you receive, because I'm the one who set you on your course to Stuffed Pepper Stardom. A percentage of any future royalties you may receive after going commercial is also appreciated.

Mama Pea's Stuffed Peppers

• 12 large green or red sweet peppers
• 2 cups minced onions
• 1 pound diced mushrooms
• 4 cloves minced garlic
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound pork sausage
• 1 pound ground beef
• 6 cups cooked brown rice
• 4 beaten eggs
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Slice peppers in half lengthwise; remove stems, seeds and membranes. Blanch in boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove to ice water to stop cooking process. When pepper halves are cool, drain and set aside.

Saute onions, mushrooms, and garlic in butter until soft.

In a separate large stock pot, brown pork sausage and beef. Drain off excess fat, if necessary. Add sauteed vegetables, cooked rice, beaten eggs, salt, pepper and cheese and mix well. Stuff pepper halves.

To freeze: Arrange stuffed peppers on cookie sheet and place in freezer until frozen. Then wrap in freezer paper in desired portions, label and store in freezer.

To serve: Defrost on counter, place in covered casserole dish and bake at 350° for 30 minutes. (If you forget to take them out of freezer in time to defrost, I'm sure increasing the baking time would work out well.)

Yield: 24 stuffed pepper halves.

Of course, the size of your peppers is going to determine how far this quantity of filling is going to go. My peppers were quite large (one stuffed pepper half for each of us was adequate at our initial sample meal) so that could have been part of my dilemma of "too many peppers, not enough filling".

Happy stuffing!