Kitchen Adventures! - Shepherd's Pie

My mom found the recipe for Shepherd's Pie first. My sister was the second to have it and she added a few touches of her own. Then it found it's way to me. I have to say, something so simple should not be this good. I have a few recipes in my back pocket for those days when I need to cook  and have very little time to do it. Shepherd's Pie is one of them. And it is a God send.

The ingredients are pretty simple: ground beef, peas and carrots (or whatever veggies tickle your fancy), cream of celery soup (or cream of mushroom if that is your thing), and some mashed potatoes. Now, my mom is all about the homestyle way of doing things. She makes this dish with fresh vegetables, right down to chopping the carrots and boiling the potatoes. I admit, that is probably the healthiest way to do. But I take as many shortcuts as much as I can. I tend to buy my veggies frozen when they go on sale. (C'mon $1 for a bag of frozen veggies?! How do you pass that up?) And use potato flakes to speed up the mashed potato process. What can I say, I'm addicted to the "dump and go" method of cooking.

You can switch out the ground beef and use ground turkey. I find that ground turkey is a decent substitute in a few of the dishes that I have made. Ground turkey has a lighter flavor and the consistency is slightly different, but that is it. There is even a vegetarian "ground beef" made by Morning Star. I personally have never used it in Shepherd's Pie, but I used it to make chili. Again, different texture, but the taste was fine.

So, after you have cooked all your ingredients on the stove, you put them in a casserole dish and slide it into the oven. Then you are finished. Like I said, quick and easy. And it will taste like you spent forever on it. What do you guys fix when you are pressed for time?