Dinner in A Pumpkin

Every year for the past few years, Julie has made a fun tradition for our family: Dinner in a pumpkin. The adults all love it (we've served it at family parties), and most of the kids eat it also. This year it was the day before Halloween (which was great, because we had it pre-made for Halloween day, which was a little hectic). The dinner is made with wild rice and turkey burger, precooked and then baked in a pumpkin. It is quite delicious!

Dinner in a Pumpkin

Medium Sized Pumpkin (about 4 lbs)

1 ½ lbs. lean ground beef or turkey burger with 2 T. olive oil

1/3 cup chopped green pepper

¾ cup chopped celery

¾ cup chopped onion

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. pepper

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup Worcestershire sauce

4 oz can of mushrooms

1 can cream of mushroom or golden mushroom soup

2 cups cooked rice (wild rice is nice, brown rice and Bulgar wheat pilaf is great too).

optional: 2 Tbs. Brown sugar

Using a sharp knife, cut lid from pumpkin and scoop out pumpkin seeds and excess membrane with a scraping tool. In a large skillet, combine ground beef, chopped green pepper, chopped celery, and chopped onion and cook over medium heat until ground beef is browned. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well and place mixture in the pumpkin. Place lid on the pumpkin, and put the pumpkin on a foil lined cookie sheet, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 ½ hours or until pumpkin is soft and outside of pumpkin may be slightly brown. A fork poked in the side slides easily through.

*We like to toast the pumpkin seed with a little salt and some olive oil on a cookie sheet int he oven about 350 until slightly browned. Great snack for kids, lots of fiber.

**This makes several meals. Once we have had two dinners and most of the filling is gone leaving excess pumpkin, I scoop out the shell and discard. The cooked pumpkin is then pureed with a can of chicken broth and put into a heavy bottom pan. I added some cooked yam pureed with soy milk, a dash of onion salt, onion powder, ginger, nutmeg, a splash of lemon juice, fresh ground pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of margarine and we ate a yummy Pumpkin Soup with toasted Parmesan bread.

Another version is Pumpkin Stew.

Pumpkin Stew

1 ½ lbs. cubed stew meat

2 tbsp. oil

1 cup water

8 tiny onions

2-3 potatoes, cubed

4 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 green pepper, cut into squares

1 clove garlic

Salt and pepper

2 tbsp. bouillon

1 (15 oz.) can tomatoes

1 large pumpkin

Brown meat in oil. Add water, onions, potatoes, carrots, green pepper, garlic, salt and pepper. Simmer 25 minutes. Cut top from pumpkin. Clean. Sprinkle cavity with salt. Place in shallow, but sturdy baking dish. A cake pan works well. Add bouillon and tomatoes to stew. Pour all ingredients into pumpkin and replace top. Brush outside of pumpkin with oil and bake at 325 degrees for 2 hours. Serve from pumpkin, scooping out pumpkin with the stew.