Unstuffed Pepper Casserole

I have blogged about my Stuffed Bell Peppers before and my family really loves them, but I noticed that they would just eat the stuffing out of them and then throw the pepper into our chicken bucket.  I was tired of wasting so much food (even though the chickens loved it), so I decided to deconstruct it and turn it into a casserole.  Here is what I used this week:

Ingredients:
3-4 cups cooked rice
3 bell peppers
3 cups cooked beans (1 quart size jar of homemade canned)
2 cups salsa, or canned tomatoes (1 pint size jar homemade canned)
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
grated cheese
ground meat, cooked (not shown)
1 cup sour cream (not shown)
1 Tbsp taco seasoning if using canned tomatoes instead of salsa

Directions:

Chop up bell peppers into bite sized pieces. Add the rest of the ingredients, saving some cheese to sprinkle on top. Put in a casserole dish and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Verdict:

My kids love this! I have also used quinoa in place of the rice before and all but one of my kids eat it that way also. Any color pepper works, so we just use whatever comes in our Bountiful Basket. Some of the kids will still pick out the peppers, but at least this way I know less food is being wasted than when it was a whole pepper.