Shepherd's Pie

Finally...we have food in our house again!! I was waiting for the husband's pay day to get here to go grocery shopping (I'm sure you other SAHMs know how that goes...), so finally we can eat decently again. Last night the husband ended up bringing home two frozen pizzas because I'd had a horrible, horrible day dealing with an unruly toddler and didn't dare take him out in public to go buy cheddar cheese to make Shepherd's Pie last night. Did that sentence make any sense? I'm not sure. He said I could run out and get some once he got home, but I thought I might not ever return if I did that. Seriously...that was the day I'd had.

On a somewhat random side note, I was pretty pleased with my grocery shopping today. I spent $65 and saved $63--and that included buying two whole chickens and two packages of chicken drumsticks. My friend Jen A. has a great blog on saving money at the grocery store with coupons, niftythriftythriving.blogspot.com. She gets amazing savings grocery shopping and doing the whole CVS Extra Care Bucks deal. I'm in awe of how much she saves.

Back to my dinner...kind of. I'll be posting the recipe later because I'm kind of making it up as I go. I'm loosely basing this on a Paula Deen recipe for Shepherd's Pie I saw on her show one time. Loosely in the sense that I'm using leftover pot roast for the meat, and I think the similarities end there. Other than that I'm doing it pretty much how I normally do my Shepherd's Pie...meat, gravy, and vegetables mixed together, topped with mashed potatoes and then some cheese on top. Normally I do everything on the stove top and then put it together in some kind of casserole and stick that under the broiler to melt the cheese. There's still some gravy/sauce left from the pot roast, so I'll see how much of that there is and if necessary make some brown gravy to supplement if I need to.

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Okay, at long last, here's the recipe I ended up using for Shepherd's Pie.

Shepherd's Pie v2.0
1 to 1.5 lbs leftover cooked pot roast
1 bag frozen mixed vegetables
1 package brown gravy, prepared
Mashed potatoes (probably 3-4 russet potatoes, cooked and mashed)
1 cup cheddar cheese

Cut leftover pot roast into chunks. Place in skillet to heat up. Once meat is heated, add bag of vegetables to pan. Once vegetables are cooked, stir in prepared gravy mix. When this is all heated through, transfer to an 8x8 baking dish. Spread mashed potatoes on top of meat/veggie/gravy mixture. Top with cheddar cheese. Place under broiler until cheese is melted.

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Totally easy, huh. I made the equivalent of two packages of gravy when I made this, but one would have been plenty. I have to say, I like this version a lot better than when I make it with hamburger. They're both good, but this will definitely become my leftover pot roast go-to meal. I used instant potatoes (because I got them on sale for ridiculously cheap and needed to save the real potatoes I had for something else later in the week), and I remembered why I don't like instant potatoes. They just taste funny to me, and they're way too salty. Real mashed potatoes are so easy to make, I don't know why they even sell instant potatoes. This is definitely something I will make again!!

Wanna see what it looked like? I really need better lighting in my kitchen.