~Dinner in a Pumpkin~

Literally. I cooked this meal inside a pumpkin in the oven. And I served this meal in the pumpkin. So when you take the spoon to get the goodness out, you also scoop some cooked pumpkin as well. Yum. This has become a tradition for my little fambam on Halloween to make. Happy Halloween cooking! I love making different things that are festive, too. My girlfriend Brooke requested this recipe; we had her and her hubby over for dinner last Halloween when I made this. It's really good! The cooked pumpkin is adorable served on a platter with smaller pumpkins (not that I did this...). The pumpkin once cooked will get brownish and slightly saggy. The pictured pumpkin below is before it was cooked.

you'll need:

1 medium sized (10-12" diameter, basketball sized, ~10 lbs.) pumpkin
1 pound ground beef
1 pound (a chub.) mild sausage
1 large onion, chopped
2 teaspoons oil

1 head broccoli, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 large green apple, diced

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar/mozz/jack cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
dash red pepper
dash pumpkin pie spice

6 cups cooked hot rice or noodles, for serving

get busy:

Remove top racks from the oven and preheat to 375 degrees.
Cut the top off the pumpkin and remove all the seeds and stringy pulp inside. Season inside pumpkin with a little salt, pepper, and pumpkin pie spice.

Heat oil in a large saute pan and bring a big pot of water to a boil. Add beef, sausage and onions into saute pan and cook until browned. add broccoli, carrots and apple into boiling water and cook for 8 minutes to soften. (Skip this step if you like a little bite to your veg.) drain vegetables. In your biggest mixing bowl, whisk together the softened cream cheese, milk, cheese, parmesan, garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper. stir in meat and onions and veggies. Carefully pour into prepared pumpkin and replace pumpkin top. place pumpkin on a heavy duty cookie sheet or in a casserole dish. Carefully put in oven and cook for 1 1/2 hours at 375 degrees. to serve, scrape sides and bottom of pumpkin to get bits of pumpkin with stroganoff. Serve over hot rice or noodles.

* The recipe may be halved and prepared in a small pumpkin for a cute little family.

**I don't like sausage, so I omitted that from my recipe. You can add any other meat like ground turkey or just have the ground beef.