Health

Healthy Recipe: Simple Side Peppers

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By Rachel F. Johnson
    You know how certain foods tend to just sit in your refrigerator/pantry for a while? Well, I’ve had these banana peppers from my sister’s garden for about 3 weeks! I finally got around to cooking them yesterday and they were great! Using just a bit of Colby Jack cheese with a small dollop of fat free cream cheese really kept the flavor up and the calories down! Also, I chose to use turkey bacon rather than real bacon for this recipe because 1) I baked these in the oven and turkey bacon bakes more evenly than regular bacon, 2) turkey bacon is nutritionally better than regular bacon, 3) it is cheaper too (which was the real determinant!) If you aren’t a fan of turkey bacon, feel free to try this recipe with regular bacon if you would like, but it really does taste great using the turkey!
• 8 banana peppers
• 4 oz. fat free cream cheese
• 2 oz. Colby Jack cheese
• 8 slices turkey bacon
• Salt and pepper to taste
    Preheat oven to 400. Cut tops off of banana pepper and de-seed the insides. Set aside. Divide cream cheese into 8 sections, ½ oz. each. Repeat with Colby Jack cheese. (I did this by cutting it into long strips, so I could easily stick it in the pepper!) Using your hands, push the cream cheese around the long strip of Colby jack and season as desired. Stuff cheese mixture into all 8 peppers. When that is done, rinse off your hands and grab the bacon! Wrap one slice of bacon around each pepper and fasten into place with a toothpick. 
    Now, my Aunt Bee has this super-cool pepper cooker from Williams Sonoma to keep peppers from falling. I don’t. So what I did was stick a cooling rack from dollar tree on top of a muffin tin. I stuffed the peppers in and voila: cheap, rigged pepper cooker! 
    Bake for 12 minutes. Turn oven off and let sit with the door closed for 10 more minutes. This allows the cheese to stay warm without and any excess juices to drain from the bacon. Serve warm!  
    Nutrition per 1 pepper: 72 kcal, 4 g fat (2 g sat), 5 g carbs, 6 g protein
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