Mock Shepherd's Pie

Beth’s been staying with me for a few weeks, which is fun since I have someone to cook for and eat with. I like to plan meals a few days in advance because I hate to go to the supermarket every day. It also stresses me out to think about what to have for dinner every night. I am especially diligent about this since I recently started working again (YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!) and I DEFINITELY do not want to shop, cook and do dishes every single night.

One day I should just tape record the conversations we have about meals and post it as an audio file. They tend to go something like this:

“Do you want omelettes or turkey burgers?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Ok I’m in the mood for Mexican, how about tacos?”

“Sure.”

“I saw a good recipe Rachel Ray was making that involved chicken and broccoli. Wanna try it?”

“I don’t care.”

I think you get the idea. I can never decide what I want and like to keep my options open. And Beth just agrees with everything I say.

So the other night I had some chopped turkey meat that had to be cooked before it expired. Beth’s default dinner with chopped turkey is ususally turkey burgers— but that always sounds boring to me. One of my favorite things, especially when it is colder out is gravy. It reminds me of cold days in elementary school. Whenever we’d open a can of gravy in Florida I’d always pronounce “It smells like winter.”

That’s because one of my mother’s default quick dinners was ground meat in gravy over pasta (sorry, Italian girls, I know you think this is gross). This is a good, easy hot meal that can feed a lot of people. This time, Beth cooked and we decided to make it over mashed potatoes. I keep calling this a mock shephard’s pie, but it is very simple. It only requires four ingredients:

1. About a pound of chopped turkey breast (make sure it is ground turkey breast. Regular ground turkey is full of fat.)
2. 1-2 cans of Campbell’s mushroom gravy
3. Mashed potatoes
4. Extra mushrooms (I like extra mushrooms in mushroom gravy)

Brown the meat. Add the gravy and any vegetables. Simmer for a few minutes. Make the mashed potatoes. Place meat on top of potatoes.

Serve!

This goes well with Pillsbury rolls or Italian bread. For some reason, this tastes good. But not as good as I remember from my childhood.