Dinner In A Pumpkin

This dinner was brought to me by a sweet neighbor lady when Lily was born. I made it for the first time last night. We all enjoyed it and the children thought it was so cute, festive and fun for fall. It is a pretty simple recipe, but you must endure cleaning out a pumpkin (not one of my favorite things to do). My neighbor always doubles the recipe and makes an extra. My pumpkins were pretty small, so my doubled recipe actually made three. I think this would be a fun Halloween dinner.

Ingredients:

1 onion (chopped)
1 small to medium pumpkin
2 tbs olive or vegetable oil
1-2 lbs ground beef
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 4-oz can sliced mushrooms (chopped very small)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1 8-oz can sliced water chestnuts (chopped very small

Directions:

Cut off top of pumpkin and clean out seeds and pulp. If you wish, paint face of pumpkins with markers or acrylic paint. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet saute onion with oil. Remove from pan. Brown ground beef, drain and then mix onions, brown sugar, mushrooms, soup and soy sauce. Simmer about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cooked rice and water chestnuts. Spoon mixture into cleaned pumpkin shell, replace pumpkin top, place on baking sheet or roasting pan and bake 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until inside of pumpkin shell is tender. To serve scoop out cooked pumpkin with the rice mixture. Enjoy!