Recipe!! Dinner in a Pumpkin

Alrighty, as promised, here it is! You know this has to be easy, because cooking is about my least-favorite-thing to do. (not baking, I like baking...)

First off, let me say you need to use a good "eating" pumpkin, like a pie pumpkin, or sugar pumpkin... don't use a huge ol' jack-o-lantern carving one!

Also, you can use 3 - 4 small pumpkins if you want - that's what I did this time, so we each had our own to eat, which was fun! It took just about as long to cook, tho.....

Takes 2 hours/1 hour prep

Serves 6 (or 3 little piggies, like us! Well, we did have leftovers for lunch the following day.)

1 medium pumpkin
1 onion, chopped
2 TBSP veg. oil
2 lbs. ground beef
2 TBSP soy sauce
2 TBSP brown sugar
1 (4 oz) can sliced mushrooms
1 (15 oz) can cream of mushroom soup (NOTE! this is what the recipe calls for, but as far as I know soup doesn't even come in 15 oz cans... there are the little 'regular' cans, or the big 'family' cans, and 15 oz would be right in the middle. I used one 'regular' size can.)
1 1/2 cups cooked rice (I like brown basmati; nice flavor)
1 (8 oz) can sliced water chestnuts

• cut off the top of the pumpkin and thoroughly clean out pulp and seeds. Butter and salt inside of pumpkin
• preheat oven to 350 F. In a large skillet saute onions in vegetable oil until tender
• add meat and brown
• drain drippings from skillet
• add soy sauce, mushrooms, brown sugar and soup
• simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
• add cooked rice and water chestnuts
• spoon mixture into cleaned pumpkin shell(s)
• replace pumpkin top and place entire pumpkin, with filling, on a baking sheet
• bake 1 hour or until inside meat of the pumpkin is tender
• transfer pumpkin to serving plate
• remove pumpkin lid and serve meat
• for your vegetable, scoop our pumpkin and serve

That's all there is to it! Sorry I don't have any pics for you.