This isn’t a salad. It’s a vegetarian version of Shepherd’s Pie. And it is AWESOME. It reminds me of a really good pot pie.

Because I want to watch “Eastbound & Down” tonight, this’ll be a short one. I know you understand!

You know how I tend to describe my recipes as “really easy” and “simple?” Well, this one IS easy but it’s definitely a little more labor intensive as anyone who has ever made mashed potatoes knows. A friend of mine, who only had limited time after work, decided to use boxed mashed potatoes, so you can do that if you’re short on time!

Here’s what you need for the mashed potatoes:

and

POTATOES INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 pounds russet or yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 cup milk
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1/3 c sour cream
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg yolk (I used replacer)

1. Place the diced potatoes in a medium sized pot of water. Cover with salted, cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer for about 15 minutes, until potatoes are tender but not mushy. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pot.

2. Mash the potatoes. Add the milk, butter, and sour cream and continue mashing until smooth.

Stir in egg replacer. Add salt & pepper to taste. Set aside!

Now for the filling!

VEGGIE FILLING INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
5 small carrots, finely chopped (or 3 large carrots)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons tomato paste
2 cups vegetable broth (although I have a carton of Veggie Broth in the photo, at the last minute, I used my Vegetarian Chicken flavored Bullion & water. It tends to be a lot tastier than the Veggie Broth.)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 (14-ounce) can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1/2 cup fresh or frozen shelled green peas

1. Heat oil on medium-high heat in a large pot. Sautee onion & carrots for 4-5 minutes.

2. Add garlic, salt & pepper. Stir in flour, and keep cooking for another minute if you can!

3. Stir in tomato paste, broth, rosemary & thyme.

4. Bring mixture to a boil. Add kidney beans & reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, until sauce thickens.

5. Stir in corn & peas.

6. Pour veggie mixture into an 11×7″ baking dish (or something close to that.)

7. Top with mashed potatoes, smoothing the edges with a spatula to prevent it bubbling up and over in the oven.
This looks soooooo good. It has butter & sour cream but do you know what it’s missing?

Cheese. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top if you have some. All it needs now is hot fudge to be the perfect meal!

8. Put baking dish on a cookie sheet and bake for 25 minutes or until potatoes are golden brown and filling is bubbling.

Holy cow! When George got home I told him, “I just made the best dinner of my life.” to which he raised one eyebrow quizzically. Little did I know he was sick that night so I need to make it again for him. No problem!

The girls loved it.

“Here, YOU try it.”
Apparently, Bea is the Royal taster for her older sister.

She likes it!

And she’s still alive…

Adapted from Ezra Pound Cake

Just a break between salads to add this recipe. I know I just did a chocolate chip cookie recipe a week or two ago but this one is:

A. Simpler

and

B. WAYYYYYYY better!!!!

These are very light, fluffy cookies. If a cookie can be fluffy?? They look “undone” coming out of the oven and don’t flatten out or darken. Don’t worry though! That is how they are supposed to be. I made these for the Daleos’ visit last weekend and they were all eaten BEFORE the Daleos arrived so I ended up making a second batch really quickly. They were so good I just made a THIRD batch this weekend!

You probably have all these ingredients!

INGREDIENTS:
3/4 c unsalted butter, softened
3/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c all purpose flour
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c butterscotch chips

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars.

Add egg (replacer) and vanilla and beat well.

3. Whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda & salt.

Add dry ingredients to wet and mix!

You’ll notice this sandy, grainy texture. This is exactly as it should be!

4. Once it’s thoroughly combined, add chocolate/butterscotch chips and stir until spread throughout the batter evenly.

5. Drop dough onto a prepared baking sheet using a Tablespoon. Since the dough hasn’t really “come together” you may need to make small balls with your hands. I did.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. NOTE: the cookies will NOT darken or flatten. They will not seem to be “done” but they are done! If you truly are worried about them being underdone, just bake them for the full 10 minutes.

By the way, my brother in law got me this Airbake cookie sheet for Christmas. I put two dozen cookies into the oven – one on this sheet and one on a regular one and the regular ones burned on the bottom. I really love this cookie sheet! (I am not being compensated in any way, by anyone really, for saying this…)

The top.

The bottom.

Back to the cookies. Here’s what they look like PRE baking:

I make ‘em on the small side since they have so much butter/sugar.

Here’s what they look like POST baking:

It almost looks the same as the raw dough!

Trust me on this one.

Barely adapted from Kelseys Apple a Day

Don’t be put off by the Vegan aspect – this cake is delicious! It’s also totally safe to lick the batter since there are no raw eggs in it. (Not that I worry too much about that…)

If that STILL doesn’t grab you – think of this as the: “I haven’t been to the store in a while but I still want cake!” cake.

Besides love, all you need is:

INGREDIENTS:
2-1/4 c all purpose flour
1/2 c cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s but original author recommends Dutch processed)
1-1/2 c granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c warm coffee
1/2 c plus 1 TBSP vegetable oil
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
small handful of chocolate chips/chunks

Let’s get started! I promise you will like this. Mine came out almost like a brownie.

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 in bundt pan (I don’t have one so I used a loaf pan. I’ll include cooking times for both bundt pans and loaf pans.) and dust with cocoa powder.

2. Whisk dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, baking powder & salt) together in a large bowl.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together coffee, oil and vanilla.

I didn’t take a picture of this so let your imagination run wild! Oooooo yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

5. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Pay attention to these baking times!

9″ BUNDT PAN: 30-35 mins
LOAF PAN: 35-40 mins
(or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean)

Dust with powdered sugar! I didn’t because one of my kids got the child proof lock off two of my kitchen drawers containing lots and lots of small tupperware dishes and lids as well as assortments of sippy cups and their various attachments. Well, anyway, I was distracted by my own yelling.

Serve with chocolate syrup, a glass of rice milk, or my favorite: a glass of cabernet.

From Joy the Baker.

We’ve cut back on sugar and desserts this year, saving them only for special occasions, treats & bribes. But once in a while you just want to eat some chocolate chip cookies (‘specially while you’re waiting for the Thin Mints to arrive…) I figure homemade must be healthier than store bought so here we go…

Let me tell you right away: leave a couple sticks of butter out a few hours ahead of time. I just leave them out the night before but you could take them out when you get home from work & then make the cookies after dinner too.

Also, there are a couple of oddball ingredients in here. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!! But if you don’t have ‘em – don’t worry about it!

Here’s what you need:

Some of that stuff is optional so don’t get stressed out looking at it!

INGREDIENTS:
1 c butter, softened
1 c firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
2 eggs (I used egg replacer which reduced the cholesterol & no chickens were harmed – except knowing my luck, the truck carrying the boxes of egg replacer ran over a truck of chickens)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2-1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp (heaping) instant coffee granules (I accidentally used 2 TBSP and loved the result!)
1 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
2 TBSP ground flax seeds (OPTIONAL)
3/4 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 c (heaping) milk chocolate chips (or use just one kind of choc. chip)

Hopefully you are already excited about the amount of chocolate chips in this recipe. Yayy for chocolate chips!

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. In a LARGE bowl, stir together butter, brown sugar & white sugar until combined.

Add egg replacer & vanilla, stirring to combine thoroughly.

Best thing about using egg replacer instead of eggs is that you can taste the raw dough without that pesky salmonella worry in the back of your mind!

3. In a medium bowl, whisk dry ingredients together.

Don’t ask me why I had instant coffee. I think Tim & Liana picked it up when we were camping last Memorial Day weekend. I’m glad they did!

The whisk is nothing but a blur!

4. Add flax seed if desired. I add this to everything – smoothies, cookies, breads etc. Here’s the Mayo Clinic’s take on flax seed.

It looks so healthy but you really won’t notice it.

5. Add chocolate chips

& stir to combine evenly.

6. Drop balls of dough onto a cookie sheet and bake for 11-13 minutes.

I cooled them on wire racks. I also ate a few to test them.

Slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman.

If you’ve never made bread before, this is the recipe for you! Get on over to the baked goods aisle of your neighborhood Ralph’s, Safeway, Publix, Stop & Shop, Grand Union, Path Mart, oh or Wegmans (how could I forget Wegmans?) and get you these ingredients in your re-usable hemp bag:

1. Bread flour (OR all purpose flour)

2. Fleishmann’s Active Dry Yeast (you can buy in little packets if you don’t want to commit to bread-making yet)

3. Salt (surely you already have salt???)

4. Parchment paper (this will be near the wax paper but is NOT the same as wax paper)

BIG TIP: Make the dough the night BEFORE you plan on eating the bread! You’ll see why…

(I have whole wheat flour in the ingredients pic too but you don’t need it! I’ll tell you the whole wheat option at the end of the post if you’re interested & have it.)

INGREDIENTS:
3 c bread flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1.5 c lukewarm water

This is SO easy you won’t believe it. Get out a large mixing bowl and a wooden spoon. Also, fill a measuring cup with 1.5 cups lukewarm water.

Here we go:

1. Mix flour, yeast & salt together.

Add water & mix the whole dang thing with a wooden spoon

until it starts to “come together.”

Your dough will look sort of rough, or, rustic, if you will. If it looks that way, you are doing a kick ass job with this bread!

Now, dump it unceremoniously into a large mixing bowl, cover with saran wrap and place in a warm part of your kitchen if such an area exists. On top of the oven is usually warm b/c of the pilot light. **Update: I now leave it in the bowl I mixed it in to save on dishes!**

Leave it for 12-20 hours!

Check on it obsessively all the next day.

Or be normal and go to work or take care of your family while thinking about more important issues like social security, healthcare, the environment & Newt Gingrich. Ew, maybe not Newt as we are going to be eating soon…

Give yourself an hour to bake this if you need it with dinner. Here’s the last & STILL EASY part!

Find a good solid pot with lid that can withstand a 450 degree oven. Some of those Le Creuset pots etc. that I don’t own, by the way, might be good. I have my grandparents’ old pot which I use for everything. No plastic parts on it. Possibly loaded with lead & mercury but what, me worry?

Line the pot with parchment paper.

Throw away the mess you made cutting that out.

And put the scissors back. My new year’s resolution – to put things away this year. But only for ONE year.

Using just enough flour on your hands to GENTLY remove the dough from the bowl, carefully place the dough onto the parchment paper in your pot.

Put lid on pot

and place pot in COLD oven.

Turn oven on to 450 and set timer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take lid off and set timer for another 30 minutes.

Take pot out of oven, take bread out of pot & let it “rest” for 5 minutes before slicing.

Holy gluten, Batman!!! There is nothing like homemade bread!!

If you try it, I’d love to hear how it went in the comments section below…