Shepherd's Pie

• ground beef or ground lamb
• salt, pepper, spices
• peas (frozen)
• sweet potatoes (or regular potatoes)
• butter or fake butter
• milk or milk substitute
• carrots
• corn (optional)

Brown ground beef in large pan.  Season meat as you like with salt, pepper and other spices (possibly worcestershire sauce, thyme, rosemary).  Add peas, carrots and corn and mix.  Mash potatoes in a separate container with butter and milk (season with salt and pepper).  Spread meat mixture at the bottom of an appropriate dish (ie, pie dish, casserole, etc).  Spread mashed potatoes on top and place in oven to make potatoes crispy (preheat oven to 400F, use broiler to crisp potatoes).

Chicken Pot Pie

Make beer can chicken a few nights before. Bake the potato while you're at it. Then make chicken stock. Then make pot pie.

2 pie crusts
2-3 cups of chicken stock (vegetable for vegetarian)
1 potato, baked
1 small sweet potato, baked
2 large carrots
several sprigs of celery
1/2 onion
1/2 can of corn
1/2 14 oz can of artichoke hearts
other veggies of your choosing: mushrooms, tomatoes, asparagus, etc.
herbs
salt and pepper
shredded chicken (optional)
1 egg white

Chop up everything but the pie crusts into bite-size pieces, and place in crock-pot with chicken stock. Cook on low for about 12 hours. In a cup, mix some of the hot stock with flour or cornstarch to thicken. I wasn't happy with the thickening from just flour, and did a second round with corn starch, which was perfect. Turn the slow cooker to high for 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Prep the pie crust and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Fill the pie crust with the filling, and cover with the top crust. Brush with egg, and bake until golden brown.

Makes 1 pie, plus a little filling leftover. Good with biscuits the next day.

Sweet potato waffles

We had sweet potatoes from the CSA to use up, and I was thinking of making a potato pancake or potato fritters type dish with them, when it occurred to me to make sweet potato waffles with our new waffle maker.

Honestly, this was over a month ago, and I cannot remember if I used the standard waffle recipe, or the following waffle recipe. I'm fairly certain it's the latter.

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour (or a mix of APF and whole wheat flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1 3/4 cups milk
2 beaten egg yolks
1/2 cup olive oil
2 egg whites whipped till stiff

I used 3 or 4 sweet potatoes that had been steamed in the pressure cooker, then pureed, allowed to cool a bit, and added with the olive oil. I used a little less than 1/2 cup olive oil because I was worried that the sweet potatoes and oil would make for too much moisture, but the waffles did stick enough that I had to spray the waffle maker between each waffle, so the full amount of oil would probably be best. I used as much flour as necessary to bring it to the right consistency before folding in the egg whites.

I didn't want these to be sweet waffles, so I didn't put in the 1 1/2 T sugar and 1 t vanilla this recipe also calls for.

You mix everything together but the egg whites, and then whip those to peaks, and fold them in. Makes nice crusty waffles.

We had ours with a choice of monastery honey in clover and orange flavors, maple syrup, or treacle on top. They would have been really good with fruit as well.

Heather declared them to be the best waffles she's ever had.

Update: After much begging from Heather, I made these again, and this time I roasted the sweet potatoes. I don't think I'll do that in the future because I ended up losing some over-browned sections. I also used the immersion blender to mix the batter, and just pureed the potatoes in with the batter. I did the whipped egg white recipe with a cup of whole wheat flour, and this time had to add quite a lot more milk to get the right consistency. They were delicious, with melt in your mouth centers.