It being almost St. Patrick’s Day, I’m feeling the urge to make some sort of representative dish. I will certainly make corned beef and cabbage on Thursday, but since I’m not corning my own beef, I don’t think that recipe is really blog worthy – “Go to the grocery store, buy some corned beef, cook in a large pot…” I’ve already posted my Colcannon recipe, which I suspect I’ll make this week too. So I thought, well, Shepherd’s Pie is decently Irish enough. I think most people associate England with it, but those Irish make it too. It can also be called Cottage Pie. And since it’s just a dish of meat and potatoes, the variations are endless!
I originally meant to make this even more interesting by adding butternut squash in the potato mash, but when I started to get all of my ingredients together on the counter, I noticed that my butternut squash that had been waiting to be used had gotten soft and wrinkled. And so, rather than having a kitchen meltdown (which I seem to be apt to do), I said, well that’s just fine, the sweet potatoes will be wonderful on their own. Had I had a kitchen meltdown (because I was really looking forward to using butternut squash in this recipe), I think I would have been excused this time. I’m training for a half marathon that’s coming up on April 10th, and I had run 11 miles that afternoon and was pretty hungry for dinner. And since it had been declared, unbeknownst to me, Household Nap Time at around 4:30, I had to patiently wait to go to the grocery store until the two kitties and Joe woke up from their cuddlefest on the couch. (Joe had said he wanted to come to the grocer’s with me – I am capable of doing it myself normally). So around 6:30 we finally ventured out and got our ingredients. So this meant that dinner was ready at almost 10:00. Ugh. I was pretty ready to eat.
the crankin' kitchen! 