Pepper Pumpkins and Mashed BOOtatoes

I actually made them this year, and here are the pictures to prove it!! (and illustrated six step how-to guide and recipe below)

Every holiday season I start decorating and preparing just a little bit earlier than the start of the season — which lulls me into falsely believing I have plenty of time to prepare and create all the fantastical holiday projects that dance through my head.  Yet somehow I go from being the early bird planner to the last minute loser every year without having any idea what happened to all the time between.

For YEARS I have planned to make stuffed peppers carved as Jack-O-Lanterns and mashed potatoes in the shape of ghosts that I rename mashed “BOOtatoes” but somehow Halloween passes before I can bring my Halloween dinner visions to life.

Well this year it finally happened! We made my Halloween dinner dreams come true! It was fun, festive and most importantly DELICIOUS.

So, here is the recipe we used and the step by step pictures along the way. This is recipe was created and tweaked to be more healthy by my mom, the lovely and talented artist Peggy Hickey.

Ingredients

3 Orange Bell Peppers

1 half pound (85% lean) chopped beef

1/4 cup dry uncooked oatmeal

1 half a small onion diced

1 tablespoon Gravy Master

1 can (16 oz) tomato sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Steps illustrated below!

Preheat the oven to 385 F degrees.

I started with the lovely orange peppers that I see in the store every year, only this time I bought them early, forcing myself to make this meal before the peppers went bad. 

I treated the little orange peppers just like pumpkins — cutting around the top as a ‘lid’ just like when carving a Jack-O-Lantern.

This made it quite easy to pull all the seeds out in one easy step.

Cut the seeds off the ‘lid’ and clean out any stray seeds inside.

Toss the seeds, but keep the ‘lid’ for later.

Then the fun part of carving the ‘face’.

Channel your inner child and give each pepper it’s own playful or spooky personality.

Don’t make them too scary or you’ll be afraid to eat it!

Make the stuffing by combining:

1 half pound (85% lean) chopped beef

1/4 cup dry uncooked oatmeal

1 half a small onion diced

1 tablespoon Gravy Master

Fill each pepper pumpkin with the meat mixture.

Don’t pack it too tightly or it may not cook evenly.

Put their lids back on and pop them in the oven!

Bake for 45 minutes at 385 F degrees.

I DARE you not to smile back at them when you see their little faces smiling out from the oven –it’s not possible.

While they are in the oven, start the sauce by combining the following:

1 can(16 oz) tomato sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Combine tomato sauce, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar in a small pan. Heat until the sugar dissolves and it’s nice and hot. Don’t overcook.

Serve with mashed potatoes spooned into ghost shapes and use peppercorns as eyes and mouth. 

You could use a pastry bag for the ghostly mashed BOOtatoes, or you can artfully dollop the potatoes – snowman style.

I used a plain ole spoon and placed a large dollop on the plate, then a medium one on top of that and a small one on top. Pay extra attention to the peak on the top dollop because that will make the ghosty head. 

Open the top of the pepper pumpkin and pour sauce inside the pepper so it oozes out creepily.

This sauce is tangy and sweet and a perfect compliment to the peppers.

And thats it! 

I’ve wanted to make this meal for so many years, and we finally did it! 

Okay…full disclosure. We made these on November 4th !! 

But in all fairness, the Halloween decorations were still up, and being after Halloween meant no trick or treaters to interrupt dinner, and we had lots of leftover candy for dessert!

Also, we are always looking to create healthy meals, and ground beef does not typically make it into our meal plans. Peggo had the great idea of adding the oatmeal to the stuffing with the rationale that the beef may raise cholesterol, but Oatmeal lowers it, so they cancel themselves out! While that science may or may not be completely sound, the oatmeal does bulk up the meat filling so you get a nice big portion without feeling too terribly guilty!