A few days ago, I threw together a rather yummy pumpkin coconut curry with ground beef for dinner. It was so easy and so tasty that I had to write up the instructions.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• 1-2 large onions
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1-2 cups roasted fresh pumpkin, flesh only, puréed
• 1 tbsp curry paste (or to taste)
• 1 can coconut milk
• salt to taste

In a large frying pan, sautée the onions in coconut oil over medium-high heat until soft. Then add the ground beef, breaking it up and stirring it until all the pink is gone.

Add the pumpkin, coconut milk, and curry paste. Allow to simmer for a few minutes to reduce the sauce and blend the flavors. Salt to taste.

It makes about four servings, and I served it in bowls. It doesn’t look like much, but we enjoyed it!

A note about the roasted pumpkin:

In the fall, I buy, roast, and freeze fresh pumpkins, so that I can use them in cooking throughout the year, as I did here. If you don’t have any on hand, I’d recommend some other suitable vegetables, rather than canned pumpkin. You might try some other puréed squash, like acorn or butternut. I imagine that mashed baked yams or puréed carrots would be tasty too.

To roast and freeze pumpkin, here’s what I do: I line a cookie sheet with foil and grease that with a bit of coconut oil. Then I slice the pumpkins in half, remove the pumpkin seeds, place them face down on the cookie sheet, and cover them tightly with foil. I cook them at 325 F for 75 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 30 to 45 minutes, until the flesh is soft. After they cool, I scrape the flesh of the pumpkin from the rind. I put that into 1.5 cup containers, then freeze them for later use.

So to make this recipe, I just had to thaw and then puree some already-roasted pumpkin. (I puréed with my trusty hand-held blender.)

As for other changes, you could easily increase the ground beef to 2 pounds, as well as add other kinds of vegetables. You could switch to chicken or hunks of beef. The possibilities are endless!