Green is my favorite color

IT'S HOT, H-O-T hot people! I have been working in my classroom getting ready for open house on the 28th. I have to be thankful that I work indoors, what horrible conditions to be an outdoor worker these days. And speaking of working outside, our street has been a mess for over 2 weeks, they are tearing up almost every speckle of cement and making it new before public begins school next week. The intersection that we use ALL the time has been out of commission for the same amount of time. There are days when we barely make it out of our drive and onto a passable road, I always pray when I get ready to leave the house that there will be a path in this maze. Those workers never get a break from the heat, they sit under a shady tree for breaks (throwing water bottles in my lawn) and get right back to it. I just finished watching them move huge slabs of cement to a dump truck, I watched because I was pretty sure they were going to nail my mail box. So far, so good.

The heat has hindered my menu this week. I bought a beautiful ham, but obviously it hasn't been choice weather for running the oven for any amount of time. Soooo, I took out some hamburger a couple of days ago. We used half of it last night to grill burgers, and today I used the rest to stuff peppers. I didn't have any tomato soup which is what my regular recipe calls for, so I looked for a recipe that included pizza sauce, for some reason I had a couple of jars of that. The more I think about it - the better it sounds. I will have to comment later on how it turned out, but I have high hopes for this one.

Pizza Stuffed Green Peppers
green peppers - 3 to 6 depending on size
1 16oz jar of pizza sauce
1 1/2 lb ground beef
1 cup of toasted bread cubed to 1/2" pieces
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onion (maybe some black olives & mushrooms?)
salt and pepper to taste
4 oz mozzarella cheese cut into 4 or 6 pieces

Clean the peppers and cut the tops off, so you can replace it after filling. Mix 1/2 cup sauce with ground beef, toasted bread, egg, onion, salt and pepper. The idea is to have a chunk of mozzarella cheese wrapped in hamburger to go in each pepper. You'll have to cut it to the shape and quantity of your peppers. I had 3 l-o-n-g giant peppers, so I did 3 long chunks of cheese. Because they were long fat peppers I laid them on their side and cut accordingly. Be sure to try and seal the meat well so it doesn't ooze cheese out while it cooks. My meat seemed kind of runny, but I'm hoping it will bake up all right. I topped the peppers with the rest of the pizza sauce before I put the pepper lid back on. I will probably top these with some shredded cheese when they are almost done. If these were going in the oven I would say 400* for 30 min. I put mine in a slow cooker today on medium, I'll adjust the heat as needed but think it will take about 3 hours.

I'll give you the verdict later. Stay cool!