Stuffed Italian Peppers

Traditionally I've sauteed these peppers with simply olive oil and garlic. The Italian style peppers stand alone in flavor. You can also add a few mushrooms and onions to the mix for variety. Always seeking to find a different twist on mundane meals I chose to stuff them. I know, I've been doing a lot of stuffing lately, it seems. But, this is a new creation worth a try. Thank you, dad and mom, for your contribution of peppers. They had an overload situation with the peppers this year. I'm always happy to help them out!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I parboiled the peppers whole for about 10 minutes, gave them a cold water bath to stop the cooking and made a slit in them to clean out the seeds. Place them on a foil lined sheet pan and they're ready to stuff.

Make the orzo. I used 1/2 cup dry to yield 1 cup cooked. (I didn't use all the orzo because I wanted to save some for breakfast.) I used about 1/2 cooked orzo for this recipe. Set aside. In another saute pan cook:

1 T olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

2 T chopped onion

2 medium size portabello mushrooms, chopped

1 T tomato sauce or marinara sauce

Cook for a bit and add 1/4 c water and orzo. Mix well. Cut up small nickel size chunks of mozzarella cheese. Put some chunks in the pepper before adding orzo mixture and leave some for the top. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes or until heated through and the cheese melts.

Enjoy!

Serving size differs. I used 5 peppers for this but you can double it quite easily.