Happy Halloween and Dinner in a Pumpkin!

We took Goose to a pumpkin patch last week and much to my delight they had sugar pumpkins for baking - those are hard to come by out here where all we ever see are jack-o-lantern pumpkins.  So, logically, when we got home I promptly starting looking up recipes for Dinner in a Pumpkin and here's what we came up with:

1 lb ground beef (or turkey, which is healthier and ALWAYS cheaper out here)
4 oz sliced mushrooms
1 onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
3 carrots, diced
1 10 oz can cream of mushroom soup
2 C cooked rice, give or take (we just used leftover rice.  I don't know how much it was)
1/4 C soy sauce
3 Tbsp brown sugar

Cut 3 inch circle top off pumpkin and remove seeds and strings.  Replace pumpkin top.  Place pumpkin on a cookie sheet covered with foil.  If desired, draw a face on the pumpkin.  Brush the exterior of the pumpkin with oil and the interior with melted butter.  Bake the empty pumpkin for 45-60 minutes.

Meanwhile, brown the ground beef with the veggies until the meat is cooked and the veggies are tender. Drain any fat, if necessary.  Stir in the soup, rice, soy sauce, and brown sugar.  Fill pumpkin with meat mixture.  Return to the oven and bake an additional 1-2 hours, until pumpkin is tender when poked with a fork.

To serve, remove some of the meat mixture so you have room inside the pumpkin to scrape pumpkin flesh off the walls.  Mix pumpkin flesh into the meat mixture.

This was quite yummy.  We didn't pre-bake the pumpkin, but after 2 hours of baking the filled pumpkin it still wasn't done.  So when I make this again, I will for sure pre-bake the pumpkin as I directed here.

And finally, happy Halloween from Wilma, Fred, Bam-Bam, and Pebbles (coming Feb 2014!)