First off, don’t mind my double watermaking on all my photos, I made a booboo and thought “oh well, everyone will know it’s Meagen’s from Chaos and Cookies!”This is a perfect day to blog because I have a “wicked sore throat y’all”! Hehe, had to mix my northeast past and southern presence together:-) I have a raging case of the ragweed allergies happening this week, today is the worst! I literally am allergic to the world, especially most things that grow in the south which is sad because I love the south! I bear it, I think the allergy shots helped slightly and I do find myself suffering far less now that we have been here a few years and my body has adjusted! Anyone suffering with me? I know lots of my friends and my whole house is battling it too!

I have been wanting to get this recipe up for a few weeks now as it’s one of my favorites, I just haven’t got to it and when one of my fellow blogger friends followed me on Instagram (which you all can do at chaosandcookies, of course) and saw a picture of this recipe she asked if it were on my blog! So it is now my friend! By the way you should visit her blog as well, it’s awesome and she’s a sweetie, so go visit her at http://mainstcuisine.wordpress.com.

This recipe is one of my favorites for two reasons. First just because it’s so freaking delicious but second because they remind me of all those years ago when I met my husband and we were dating. My family had a family friend who actually gave us this recipe. He was a sweet man and every summer he would rent a little cottage on Spofford Lake in NH near where we are originally from. We would spend a lot of time there on the lake and on the boat and these tomatoes just bring me back because we often would have them at the cottage. This cottage and Spofford Lake are where my husband asked me to marry him on July 4th 1998, out on the boat all my ourselves in the middle of the lake. He said if I had said no he was going to throw me overboard;-) He knows how well I swim, choke! This recipe is very special. Surprisingly I had not made these in YEARS before this last batch! They really are not all that healthy so maybe it’s a good thing I hadn’t made them in a while, but oh my goodness are they tasty! So I want to share them with you as well as get them up here which I consider my personal virtual recipe book! I’ve always thought it would be cool to write my own cookbook, and right now, this works! Here is the recipe for the stuffed tomatoes.

10 medium to large tomatoes (you can do more or less, you will however want these for leftovers, ahhhhmazing left over!)

18 slices of bread (ignore that I only have 10 shown in my photo, white or wheat works)

1 block of cheddar cheese (I used Cabot because I ADORE cabot and am from VT/NH where we always used Cabot!), shredded

1 pound of bacon, cooked and broken into chunks

1 medium onion, diced

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

First off, cook up your bacon and set aside. When it cools break it into chunks. 

This Aberdeen bacon was so good! I was impressed, I had never heard of it before and it’s now one of my favorites! Kroger had it on sale for 1.99 a package! I was a little scared at that price, but it worked out perfect!

Now you want to prep your tomatoes. Carefully cut off the tops because you are going to hollow them out to stuff them. Get a large mixing bowl and put all the tomato “guts” (sorry, that’s just what my mom and I call them!) into the bowl, you need these for the recipe so don’t toss em!

When they are all hollowed out place them in a baking dish. Now take your bread and break it into chunks and add it to the tomato guts.

Dice the onion and shred the cheese and also add that. Now add the pieces of bacon. Add some salt and pepper to your taste and mix together very well. Stuff each tomato with this mixture.You will most likely have left over stuffing as I did, so you better believe I broke out a cast iron pan, placed the remaining stuffing in it and baked it alongside the tomatoes! You want to bake these tomatoes at 350 degrees for about a half hour or until they are browned and hot throughout.

I hope you try this recipe and let me know what you think! You won’t be disappointed!