Foodie Friday Dinner in a Pumpkin

Dinner In A Pumpkin
This recipe has been a tradition around the time of Halloween or Thanksgiving for my family since I was a very little girl. I love squash in the fall and autumn. Pumpkin is a autumn/winter gourd-like squash and is perfect for this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 large pumpkin (however, needs to be small enough to fit in your oven)
• 1 lb. hamburger (ground beef)
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 3-4 stalks celery chopped
• 1 green pepper chopped (you can also do a mix of equal value green, red and yellow peppers if you have them for extra color)
• 1 container chopped mushrooms
• spoonful minced garlic
• spoonful mined ginger
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 cups cooked rice (can use white, brown or mixed)
• basil for garnish (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut off the top of the pumpkin and scoop out seeds. Save the seeds for yummy roasted pumpkin seed recipes. In a large skillet brown hamburger and add onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, garlic and ginger. Mix and sauté. Add cream of mushroom soup, soy sauce, brown sugar and rice to other ingredients. Mix well. Add all ingredients to the inside of the prepared pumpkin. Place stem top back on the pumpkin. Put a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and and put the whole pumpkin on it. Bake for about an hour or until the pumpkin is soft on the inside.

*if you want to make it a Jack O' Lantern as we did for a festive table you can by carving only the top layer of pumpkin skin off in your design and then pealing it off to show the face.