| shepherd's pie again |

I've been making vegetarian shepherd's pie for several years now. It's always a little different and has never been quite tasty enough for me to write down the recipe. Last week I made two - one for us and one I took over to a friend. She reported back to me that her preschooler ate two slices (my preschooler, on the other hand, never touched his, though he did enjoy helping make the pie). She asked me to write down the recipe, so here it is. I do think this one was finally worth writing down.

VEGETARIAN SHEPHERD'S PIE
You've got basically four components happening here: mashed potatoes, lentil filling, cream of mushroom sauce, and pie crust. If you need to shortcut you can obviously use cream of mushroom condensed soup (I'd add a little milk) and ready-made pie crusts. But if you're going fully from scratch, here's everything you need to do.

1. Boil water and peel potatoes. You're going to need a fair amount of mashed potatoes for the top of your pie. I'm going to assume you know how to make mashed potatoes. I'd recommend using about 2 pounds of raw potatoes.
2. Heat your favorite cooking oil in a wide saucepan that has a lid (you'll need it later). Dice a small onion, a couple cloves of garlic, one green pepper, and about a cup of mushrooms. Saute them until they start to get soft.
3. Add about 1/2 cup of dry, uncooked lentils to the saute. Keep it heating for about 5 minutes as the lentils get toasty.
4. Add some seasonings - I like to use thyme, paprika, marjoram, poultry seasoning, oregano (maybe not all at once, but some combination of them). Also salt and pepper.
5. Add about a cup of red wine. Doesn't have to be the good stuff. Stir and reduce the heat so the mixture just simmers. Cover it up.
6. Keep an eye on your lentils as you make the pie crust. When the liquid gets all absorbed check to see if the lentils are done. If they are not, then add more wine (you didn't drink the rest of the bottle did you?) and keep coking.
7. Pie crust. Use your favorite recipe. If you don't have one, I like this one and I use refined coconut oil in it   instead of shortening, which I never have on hand.
8. Almost done! You need cream of mushroom soup. It's actually pretty darn easy to make. Chop up about 1/2 cup of mushrooms very fine. Heat 2 T of butter in a saucepan. Once it is melted, add the mushrooms. Once they are looking sautéed, add 2 T of flour and stir until the flour starts to get a little golden. Add 1 cup of milk and continue stirring over medium heat until it thickens. Turn it off.
9. When your lentils are done and you've got your potatoes mashed, assemble the pie. Dump your mushroom soup into the lentil mixture (the wine should be all cooked off). Pour the lentil/soup mixture into the pie crust. Top with potatoes. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until the crust looks golden.