Stuffed tomatoes

I went on vacation and came home to find my tomato plants so loaded with red tomatoes that they had knocked over their tomato cages and were lying on the ground. I'll be making salsa later this week, consequently, but today I enjoyed making these tasty stuffed tomatoes. Because store bought tomatoes can be expensive, this might not be something you want to make unless tomatoes are in-season.

Stuffed Tomatoes
4-6 beefsteak tomatoes
2 cups of cooked rice
1/2 lb of ground beef or bulk (no casings) sausage
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350. In a skillet, cook the ground beef of sausage with the onion until the meat is browned completely. Turn off the heat and drain off any excess liquid. Add everything but the tomatoes and stir to combine. Set meat mixture aside.

Take your tomatoes and cut off the tops. If they roll around a lot, you can also cut a shallow slice from the bottom to stabilize. Take a spoon or a knife and gently cut out the seeds from the inside, leaving the sides about 1/2 inch thick. Stuff the now hollow tomatoes with the meat mixture. Place stuffed tomatoes in a baking dish and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until the outside of the tomato is wilted and they are hot completely through. Serve as a complete meal, garnished with shredded basil leaves, if desired.

Variations: You can stuff nearly any vegetable with the same meat mixture listed above. Hollowed out peppers, acorn squash, zucchini, or eggplant would be fantastic here. You will need to modify the cooking time. Peppers are about the same, but squash and eggplant need to be cooked until they are soft. Cover the dish in foil first, and then bake for about an hour or even longer, until a knife inserted in the flesh of the vegetable is soft. If you want to get even more adventurous, try stuffing apples. Make the same mixture, but make sure you use sausage. Then hollow out your apples just like the tomatoes and bake them for about an hour, again until they are soft.
You can also try topping the stuffed tomatoes with cheese before they bake.

Note: This makes a lot of the meat mixture, so you can save leftovers the freezer or the fridge for a different dinner. I've found that filling vegetables with yummy stuff is a fun way to get your family to eat more healthy foods.