Day 8 -Cottage Pie

The Holidays are upon us, but until I get into any of my holiday recipes I wanted to post my delicious dinner recipe.

Now I've always called this Shepherds Pie, that's what my mom always called it but I've recently found out that since it has ground beef in it, it's actually called Cottage Pie. Someday I'll try it with lamb because that sounds yummy!

So here's what you need to do, and I don't really measure anything, so I'm sorry.

Melt some butter in a skillet, add some chopped garlic & mushrooms, cook until it all smells delicious (but don't burn the garlic!!).

Meanwhile, boil some water, peel & cut up your potatoes and add to boiling water.

Add some steamed green beans (I chopped them into 2 inch long pieces).
Cook a few minutes more, then remove from the pan.

Add the ground beef and cook until no longer pink, add the green beans, mushrooms and garlic and mix well.

Add (about half a cup or so) of mushroom gravy, or beef gravy. Henry's market has dairy free gravy.

By now your potatoes should be done. I add about half a cup of Smart Balance LIGHT (the Original has dairy) and a splash of Plain Coconut Milk. Mash those taters up! Add salt & pepper.

Pour the meat mixture into a glass pan, and then top with the mashed potatoes.

Bake in the oven at 350 for 35 minutes....And....deliciousness!

Day 7 - Oh Ahi!

Hola!

I took a little break because I was in a cooking funk! When the seasons change I have to adjust my cooking a bit and sometimes can take awhile to transition. =)

Tonight I made Seared Ahi (that I slightly overcooked) for dinner.

The seared Ahi is something new I tried, raw ANYTHING scares me. It took me forever to make steak correctly but I finally got it. So now with Ahi steak you want to cook it no more than medium/rare.

I took the ahi steak, seasoned them with salt and pepper.

I heated up about 2 tsp olive oil in a pan, and added the ahi.
I let it cook about 3 to 4 minutes (depending on how thick the steak is) on each side.
You can see the color change from the bottom to the middle of the steak.
I think it's about 1/4 a way on each side you want to see the meat cooked.

After that I shredded some fresh ginger (about 1 tsp, for 2 smaller steaks) in the pan, then added a little less than 2 to 3 tsp of lemon juice and a few splashes of soy sauce. Flip the steak over and get lots of flavor on it.

I served this over white rice (with lots of sarachi sauce, I looove spicy!), and steamed green beans with a tsp of sugar and a little soy sauce.

This was really good! And went great with my all time favorite wine!