Pumpkin Stew

This is our traditional meal on Halloween night, a simple ground beef stew cooked in a pumpkin. If you use a pie pumpkin, you can also easily scrape out the cooked pumpkin to serve with the stew.  A regular small-sized "carving" pumpkin can be used as well, but the pumpkin flesh will not soften to the extent that you can easily scoop it out to eat - although it still makes a nice serving presentation.

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin
1 onion, chopped
2 Tablespoon oil
1 1/2 pound ground beef
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 4-ounce can sliced mushrooms, drained
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts

Instructions

Cut off top of pumpkin and thoroughly clean out seeds and pulp.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In large skillet, saute onions in oil until tender. Add meat and brown. Drain any drippings from skillet. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, mushrooms and soup. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cooked rice and water chestnuts. Spoon meat mixture into cleaned pumpkin.
Replace pumpkin top. Place on baking dish. Bake 1 hour or more until pumpkin is tender. Place pumpkin on serving dish. Remove lid and serve meat. Scoop out cooked pumpkin as vegetable

Roasted Halloween Pumpkin Seeds

You've carved the pumpkins. Now, roast the pumpkin seeds!

Ingredients

2 cups pumpkin seeds
1 teaspoon Worchestshire sauce
3 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Rinse the pumpkin seeds until the pulp and strings are gone. Boil the seeds in salted water for 10 minutes. Drain seeds and spread on tea towel to dry.

Combine Worchestshire sauce, butter and salt in saucepan. Add pumpkin seeds and stir to coat thoroughly. Spread on a baking dish in a single layer. Bake 1 - 2 hours at 300 degrees F.
Stir occasionally and watch for burning. Seeds should be crisp and golden when done.

Halloween Deviled Eggs

This year on Halloween, my daughter's father-in-law arrived with these deviled eggs. On one plate the eggs were decorated with black olive spiders; on the other a small piece of green onion was added as a stem to make the yolks look like pumpkins.  He added a small amount of red curry paste to the yolk mixture of color it orange, but you could also add a very small amount of red and yellow food coloring to your own favorite deviled egg recipe.

Chocolate Halloween Cutout Cookies

October 30, 2014

On Halloween Eve, making cutout cookies for the holiday seemed like the perfect thing to do. I found this recipe which had originally been published in Cooking Light.  I liked that it made a small batch of cookies (about 2 dozen); the ingredients were all things in my cupboards and required no extra trip to the grocery store; and they are easy to decorate! Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large egg whites
1/4 tsp. vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
1 or 2 Tablespoons orange juice
Orange food coloring or red and yellow food coloring to make orange

Preheat oven to 350F

Combine flour, cocoa and salt in small bowl. Stir to combine.

Cream butter and sugar in mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg whites and vanilla, beat until well combined. Add flour mixture and beat at low speed until just combined.

Spoon dough onto a sheet of waxed paper; cover and refrigerate for one hour.

Roll dough to 1/4 inch on lightly floured surface, using half of the dough. Cut into desired shapes. Refrigerate remaining dough to keep it chilled.  Place cookies on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 10 minutes. Cool 2 minutes before removing from baking sheet.Cool completely before frosting.

While cookies are baking, place powdered sugar in small bowl. Add orange juice, one teaspoon at a time until frosting is a thick consistency. Add food coloring to tint orange. Use a small decorating tip to pipe icing outline on cookies or you can place icing in plastic bag and cut off a tiny corner to use as a decorating bag.