Goat Cheese and Kalamata Olive Stuffed Mini Sweet Peppers

Ok, Fall, I surrender.  I promise to leave the criminally lazy days of summer behind and get back on the busy train of back to school.  Summer is putting up a good fight here in the Northeast with 90 degree days in the past week, but I am ready for some crisp, sparkly fall days and chilly nights without the deafening whir of the air conditioner.

Beautiful Fall Tree with SkyI’m still obsessed with this picture I took a couple of Falls ago in the cemetery across the street.  This is exactly what I’m looking for out of you, Fall.  Get on it, please.  I don’t want to hear whining about not having enough rain this summer.  We have very high expectations of you, Fall.  Live up to them.

With Fall, comes football and with football comes food.  (Ok, fine, food comes with everything).  To celebrate the first weekend of football, I tried a new recipe.

Goat Cheese and Kalamata Olive Stuffed Mini Sweet Peppers

goat-cheese-and-kalamata-olive-stuffed-mini-sweet-peppers

Yum!  Have you seen these Mini Sweet Peppers in the grocery store?  I thought they were hot peppers and so I passed by them a few times before I realized they are just miniature versions of sweet bell peppers.  These little guys are the best!  I ate them all summer.  Sometimes raw with some dip (I didn’t even slice them, just dipped them in some dill veggie dip and bit them) and sometimes on the grill, just coated in a bit of olive oil.  I’ve seen a bunch of versions of stuffed mini sweet peppers on Pinterest, so I thought I would give that  a try.

raw-mini-peppers

Ingredients

8-10 Mini Sweet Peppers

4 oz of Goat Cheese

4 oz of Ricotta Cheese

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1 t basil

8-10 Kalamata Olives, halved

  1.  Mix together cheeses and spices
  2. Slice mini sweet peppers down the middle
  3. Spoon cheese mixture into the peppers
  4. Top with half of a Kalamata olive

sliced-peppers

I ate the stuffed peppers just like that, but you could pop these in a 425 oven until the cheese is gooey and melty if you wanted to.  I love salty Kalamata olives, but they are not a universally loved item, so if you would like to make these more pleasing to a variety of palettes, you can switch them out for black olives.  Or, bacon.  I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t like some form of bacon.  I’m looking forward to trying to stuff these little guys with more things, too.  Like, maybe a traditional stuffed pepper ground beef mixture, or taco stuffed mini peppers or maybe feta cheese and tomato or buffalo chicken??  The possibilities are endless.   And guess who loves these little guys?  Kids!  Maybe not these goat cheese stuffed ones, but if you make a pizza stuffed mini sweet pepper, you’ve got a really good chance of getting a child to eat a new vegetable.  Kids seem to like anything miniature.  And pizza.

 

 

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