Blogtober 2014: Day 13

Recently I was going through some of my favorite blogs & stumbled upon Helene and her fun little Blogtober 2014 Link Up party!

Each day has a different, fun post idea & she encourages you to do all of them or just some of them...which is lucky for me since I'm always late (but obviously worth the wait!).

Today's theme is your Favorite Fall Recipe which I was really excited about because lately I have been cooking a lot of new things, one of which I featuring today!

Shepherd's Pie:

This recipe is originally from Southern Living, but I changed up a few of the things to really suit my palate as well as my pantry!

 I feel like it's always a winning situation when I don't actually have to go out and purchase specific ingredients for a recipe.

So here is the recipe, the way I put it together! ;)

First of all, I used red potatoes (skin on) & minced garlic to make mashed potatoes-I loosely use this recipe here when I make mine.

Then, you sit those to the side and brown your ground beef, which I love to use because I know exactly where it came from-from beef harvested from our farm (perks of being the farmer's daughter/girlfriend)

Once it's no longer pink you can take it out of the skillet and place it on a plate-make sure to reserve the drippings from the beef!

Then, over medium heat, you need to saute chopped onions (I used a half of a large onion), garlic (I used two cloves), green pepper (I used half of one), and celery (I used the snack sized bag-4 sticks!)

Let these veggies cook until tender, about 10 minutes. 

You can definitely use any kind of veggie that you like, these were just the ones I had on hand, I think mushrooms would be yummy too!.

Then to your skillet, add back in the cooked ground beef, a can of green peas (drained), and your spices. I used salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and some onion & garlic salts. I just eyeballed these ingredients, start off with a little-you can always add more but you can't take away!

Cook this for about one minute.

Next, add a can of diced tomatoes (or chop up your own!)

At this point I added in a dash of my favorites...Dale's & a dash of worcestershire sauce!

At this point, you cook it all down & let it get thick...for about 10 minutes or so. 

Then transfer it to a greased 3 qt. baking dish & top with the mashed potatoes.

I like to sprinkle cheese on top too!

Then put it in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

I like to serve this with garlic toast, it's so yummy!

The best thing about this is that it's such a comforting dish, it makes you want to cuddle on the couch and binge watch your favorite show on Netflix.

I hope y'all enjoyed this recipe-let me know if you decide to try it out!