Stuffed Pumpkin -- Thanksgiving Idea

I've been wanting to try this for a few years now, but was always intimidated. But I bought a couple of mini pumpkins to experiment with this year, and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, and I really liked it! Below is NOT the picture of my pumpkin, just something to give you an idea. And of course you can adjust the stuffing per your taste. The ingredients are for a mini pumpkin (still debating whether I should do individual mini ones, or one big one.)

1 cup rice, bulgur (what I used), faro, or your choice of grain
1 pkg shitake mushrooms
2 asparagus stalks
1/2 an onion
4 cloves garlic
Seasonings: salt, pepper, thyme, dash of nutmeg
Optional: dried currants or cranberries

Slice off top part of pumpkin (as in picture) and clean out seeds and strings. Drizzle the inside with a bit of olive oil and place on a backing sheet. Cover with aluminum and bake in 375-degree oven for roughly an hour, or until tender.

Meanwhile, prepare grain as you would normally. Finely chop and saute the remaining ingredients (except dried fruit) in olive oil (ok..maybe a little butter!) When pumpkin has cooked, scoop out the interior and mix all the ingredients together. If using dried fruit, now is the time to mix that in as well. Place mixture back into pumpkin, and voila!

If anyone has better tips, please share. I tried semi-cooking the ingredients first and then placing them in the pumpkin to cook fully, and it didn't really work. The above was my second attempt, and it came out quite nice.