Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Halloween dinner

We made this tonight for dinner before the kiddies went trick-or-treating. Now that Kelsey "gets" the holidays I was thinking about what traditional Halloween meal we'd have every year. This was my pick--it was pretty much a no-brainer. I think this is such a fun, memorable tradition. And it is really, really good--with the pumpkin adding just a hint of sweetness that marries SO well with the rest of it. Try it--let me know if you like it!

Dinner in a Pumpkin


1 small to medium pumpkin
1 onion
1 1/2 to 2 lb. ground beef
1 1/2 C cooked rice
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 T vegetable oil
2 T soy sauce
2 T brown sugar
1 (4 oz) can mushrooms (I don't add this...mushrooms...yuck)
1 (8 oz) can water chestnuts

Cut off top of pumpkin and clean out seeds. Paint face on pumpkin with permanent marker. Preheat oven to 350. Saute onions in oil until tender. Add meat. Brown and drain. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, mushrooms, and soup. Simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Spoon into pumpkin shell. Replace top and put on baking sheet. Bake 1 hour or until inside of pumpkin is tender. Put on plate. remove lid and serve. Serves 6.

4 comments:

Marisa said...

I'm excited to come home to a baked pumpkin! Yeah for yummy halloween meals!

Marisa said...

Add the rice after you've put all the ingredients together. I actually added about 3/4 C more rice than it called for. And then I added a little bit more once it was all cooked b/c it had a lot of juice from the pumpkin. It was really, really good!

Brandon and Lindsey B said...

yum, how big of a pumpkin did you do?

Marisa said...

we just did a medium sized one. It seriously was so yummy--I'd forgotten how good it was.