Sweet Peppers Poppers, by Cheryl

Yum, these are good! I passed by these mini peppers in the grocery store and had an urge to buy them. I buy peppers often, but never the little sweet peppers. You can do so much with these in terms of snacks or appetizers... today I mixed cream cheese with chopped spinach, but you could add scallions, bacon, jalapeno peppers, and much more to make these. What a great little snack, and super easy to make too! Yum!

Ingredients:

6 mini sweet peppers, cut in half lengthwise with seeds removed
1/2 cup cream cheese
a big handful of spinach, chopped into small bits
salt to taste

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350.

2) Mix the cream cheese with the spinach. You may have to soften the cream cheese a bit beforehand.

3) Fill each pepper with about one tablespoon of cream cheese mix, or until filled.

4) Bake for about 15 minutes. Serve warm or refrigerate until serving.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Turkey Bacon, by Diane

This pan of brussels sprouts came out like an episode on the food network! Everyone ate them up not only because they tasted amazing but they looked so delicious! We had these as a side at our Passover seder, and this couldn't have been easier to throw together alongside all the other cooking and prep. We even had two brussels sprouts haters ask for seconds! We will definitely be making these again! I just threw this together because I knew that brussels sprouts taste better when they a) have some carmelization to them and b) have some savory flavor added in.

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs fresh brussels sprouts, halved lengthwise and end removed
6 slices turkey bacon (or regular bacon, we just didn't feel we could serve that on Passover!), diced
EVOO
Salt
Pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400.

2. Spread EVOO on a baking tray, then line brussels sprouts rounded side up. Brush the tops with EVOO, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the bacon over top.

3. Roast for about 30 minutes or until they brown nicely.

Passover Sweet Potato Kugel, by Diane

This is a horrid photo because everyone ate it before I could snap the pic!!

Terrible photo aside, this was a really good dish (as evidenced by the fact that it was halfway gone before I could get to my phone). The family really enjoyed this dish, and it would be good any time of year. I was afraid it had way too many onions in it (the recipe is almost 40/60 onions to sweet potatoes) but it came out good, really homey, and a classic holiday kugel taste. The recipe said to strain the potato and onion mixture with a cheesecloth, but we just added about 1/4 cup extra matzo flour and it was fine (we had too much other work to do for the seder!). Recipe from here.

Ingredients:

3.5 lbs sweet potatoes (I used 4 large sweet potatoes)
2 large onions, diced
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ cup scallions, minced
5 eggs
½ cup matzah meal (or flour if not during Passover)
¼ cup butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper
2 tsp goya seasoning (the salt and pepper wasn't enough)


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Saute diced onions in 1 tablespoon olive oil until brown.
3. Dice sweet potatoes into 1-inch cubes and mix onions and sweet potatoes in a blender until shredded or shred with a hand grater or food processor.
4. Squeeze out excess water from onions and sweet potatoes and transfer to a bowl.
5. In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, matzah meal, scallions, salt, pepper and butter. Add in potato mixture and combine until well mixed.
6. Butter a 12x9x2 inch glass baking dish. Pour mixture into the dish and bake for one hour until cooked through and brown on top.