Well, let’s be honest up-front here. This was not a 100% local meal.  I honored the spirit of Dark Days, but not the cold, hard rules.

I confess: I used up some things that desperately needed using, since Shepherd’s Pie is such a wonderful haven for wayward mushrooms and forgotten produce that’s been living on the edge for some time.  I could have make it without these things (I did contemplate doing so, in fact), and it would have been equally delicious…but I didn’t.  And I think that’s okay. One of the reasons in favor of eating seasonal, local veggies is the benefit it has on the environment.  Making sure my borderline produce wasn’t wasted definitely fit with that goal.

Who were the non-local food fugitives in question?  A handful of crimini mushrooms, and a half-package of frozen peas that was getting freezerburn.  They were nice, but they didn’t make or break this dish.  It’s like chili, minestrone, stew, or any of that sort of thing: what ya got is what goes in the pot.  And it’ll be tasty.  Really.  Oh, the deliciousness that is a hearty cut of garlic-potato-topped vegetarian pastoral goodness.

There’s not a recipe for this, per se, so I’ll just give you the basic run-down on the process.  Make of it what you will.

Step 1: Have a brilliant and sexy Unicyclist make you a batch of his amazing garlic mashed potatoes.  Drool.  Eat some from the pot. Reluctantly set pot aside to ensure the eventual existence of the garlic mashed potato topping.

Step 2: Make up a good-sized batch of white and tan tepary beans, assuming you live in tepary country.  Tepary beans are small, sweetish, creamy beans that adore drought-like conditions.  Needless to say, they grow well in the Sonoran desert.  Sample tepary beans from the pot.  Coo over how pretty they look.

Step 3: Sautée a bunch of tasty, flavorful items such as onion, garlic, celery, and leftover crimini mushrooms.  Toss in some additional veggie items for color, such as carrots and the tomato sauce you made from farmers’ market bargains the week before.  Throw in the leftover half a CSA roasted acorn squash sitting in the fridge from a couple days earlier, the tepary beans you cooked up, and the peas that have been getting increasingly freezerburned since sometime in October.

Step 4: Add your fragile green items once everything is good and saucy: parsley, sage, and purple spinach from the CSA.

Step 5: Sprinkle liberally with salt and ZAP seasoning from the Santa Cruz Chile and Spice Company.

Step 6: Decide your pie filling looks a little thin.  Realize that the time has come to rally the forgotten legions of stale bread loaves.  Dig in the freezer until you find the bag of bread crumbs you’ve been storing for just such an occasion.  Dump ‘em in and give everything a good stir.  Exclaim, “By George, I think we’ve got it!”

Step 7: Spread the whole kit and caboodle in a 13 x 9 pan.  Eat a couple bites of filling right out of the pan.  Smoosh it around so no one notices.  Give the brilliant and sexy Unicyclist (who did actually notice the holes you made in the filling) a couple of bites right out of the pan to ensure his silence. Smoosh the filling around to hide the evidence.

Step 8: With the brilliant and sexy Unicyclist, smash the garlic mashed potatoes between your hands into little pancakes and set them on the filling.  Continue until the pan is full, spackling the gaps with potato putty.  While you admire your tuber artistry (tuberistry?), lick your fingers clean of garlic potato goop.

Step 9: Pop the shepherd’s pie in the oven at about 375 and let it cook until the filling is bubbling and the top is golden.

Step 10: Cut yourself an unreasonably large piece, because it looks so durn good.

Step 11: Enjoy.  A lot.  Make little happy noises between bites.

Step 12: Pat your potato-and-bean-filled belly in satisfaction.

Life is good.  I love shepherd’s pie weather.  Don’t you?