Cooking with Pumpkin

We have been cooking up a good amount of pumpkin here at the Elmore household.

On Halloween we picked up a couple of pumpkins and we were told about a neat little recipe.
You clean out a pumpkin and fill it with some good stuff. Then you bake the whole thing for an hour or so...and viola...Dinner in a Pumpkin!

The recipe called for ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, canned mushrooms, onion and rice. I changed it up a bit and did half sausage, half ground beef. I used fresh mushrooms and some orzo pasta that I had instead of the rice. I also added some oregano that was gonna go bad if I didn't use it soon and I added some celery for crunch.

You just cook all that up and pour it into a cleaned out pumpkin.


Put the top on and bake for 1-2 hours, I think at 350. Poke it with a knife before you take it out to make sure it is tender.

And serve!
I have to say, If I were to do this again, I would make if for guests in their own smaller pumpkins and I would serve it with a salad of some sort. This recipe was very good and would be especially delicious on a chilly night.



Soooooo I then decided to clean out the inside of that pumpkin real well and use the rest of the pumpkin for other treats. First up - Pumpkin Waffles.

I made these for breakfast and they were very very tasty. Also our house smelled so good for a long time afterward ;)
I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Thank you!
One thing I did different was I used heavy cream instead of buttermilk because that's what I had. It worked out just fine.


First mix the dry ingredients.

Then the wet.
Then add the dry to the wet.

Mix it until smooth and then add your fluffy egg whites.
Fold them in.
Pour the mixture into your awesome waffle maker that you got for $4 at a thrift store...
and there you have it. A super tasty breakfast.

And a happy husband :)


Lots more pumpkin left so lots more treats to come!