Mac and Cheese Stuffed Peppers

This is a fabuluoso do-over for leftover mac and cheese, although I think if you have significant amounts of leftover mac and cheese, you're doing something wrong.  Just sayin'.  It's also great to make up a bunch when peppers go on sale at your market and freeze a couple of batches ahead. 

As always, I offer choices in this recipe.  You can cook it in the crockpot (!!) or in the oven, and you can use whatever veggies you want...frozen or canned corn kernels, peas, cut green beans or diced carrots are easiest, but you can certainly use 2-3 cups of something fresh like diced onions, carrots, celery, beets, or chopped greens and saute them for 5-10 minutes until softened.  Quartered cherry tomatoes would be excellent as well.  Or skip the veggies if you have a princess in your household who can detect a hidden pea under 20 mattresses and will have a fit if one should come in contact with the rest of dinner.  If you skip the veggies, you'll need 2 cups of something else...more mac and cheese, or some form of chopped up protein.

You can make mac and cheese from scratch (here is one way to do it...leave out the beef and breadcrumbs, use whatever cheese you like and use sour cream instead of dressing), but I used 1 regular sized box of good ol' Kraft for this.   


Mac and Cheese Stuffed Peppers
Makes 4 servings

3 cups mac and cheese (homemade or from 1 7 oz. boxed m&c)
2 cups frozen or canned veggies (or fresh, sauteed until soft)
4 medium green bell peppers

Prepare mac and cheese.  Stir in veggies.

Slice tops off of bell peppers and remove cores.  Cut a bit off the bottoms if the peppers want to tip over.  Fill peppers with mac and cheese mixture, and put tops back on.  Put in a container to fridge or freeze.

To cook, thaw.  To cook in the crockpot, place peppers carefully in the crockpot and add 1/4 cup water or broth.  Cook on low 8-10 hours.  To cook in the oven, put the peppers in a covered casserole (or a square baking dish with foil over the top) and add 1 cup water or broth.  Bake 45 minutes, or until warmed through.  You can cook these from frozen as well, but here's a tip about packing them up for crockpot cookery. Pin It