Deep Fried Oreos, say whaaaaaaaat?

Happy New Year!!! My apologies for having my blog all out of order and never posting for months on end. I'm a busy, busy woman. The Office is not going to watch itself, but I digress... I had a wonderful New Year's Eve with friends, AJ, and my lovely sister out partying with us. There was lots of champagne, dancing and laughs. The next morning I took my sister to the airport. So sad!! When I got home I was able to console myself with an invitation to a friend's house for some more champagne and some deep fat frying! The idea was to do Twinkies and Snicker's bars, which are so not vegan, so imagine my delight when AJ's friend walks in with Oreos!! Yay! We made a basic batter for me and more pancake like batter for the rest.

Here are the non-vegan ones in the fryer.

Out of the fryer.

Oreos in the vegan batter.

Fry, my babies, FRY!!!

Yes, my little napkin, soak up some grease.

The vegan ones are a little blonder, AJ said he couldn't taste a difference.

I'm so glad I don't have a fryer.

We didn't stay long enough to do the pickles, thank the lord.

Shepherdess Pie

All Christmas season long I've been wanting to make this.  I need a single dish that covers all the bases for a yummy meal for me and that others might enjoy and that travels well.  I've never made a Shepherdess (or Shepherd) pie before but I have been wanting to for some time now.  We do a lot of family get togethers this time of year and there's not too much vegan food, I usually end up eating lots of chips (not really a complaint).  Anyway, I've only just gotten around to making it this weekend after the season is over and it's just me and AJ at home watching football.  Haha.  I looked at a few recipes and winged it.  It seems to me the main theme is meaty some thing at the bottom and mashed potatoes at the top with whatever vegetables you fancy in between.  Today I fancied Smart Ground crumbles, chickpeas, broccoli, green beans, and of course, mashers!!

Here we have a pot of mashed potatoes.

I always forget to take a picture of the layers as I go along... Here's the top. You can see my green beans and broccoli with a couple of chickpeas poking out.

Here it is topped with the mashers.

Yummy, yummy in the bowl.

Shepherdess Pie

2 large potatoes, I used Russets
2 small onions, or 1 big, whatever you've got
1 package crumbles, I used Smart Ground
1 can chickpeas
1 small head of broccoli
2 cups or so frozen green beans
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Here's how I did it:

Preheat the oven to 375. After washing I chopped the potatoes and put them in a pot of boiling, salted water. Then I left them alone to prep the rest.  I chopped the onions and put them in a pan with a touch of olive oil on medium heat until softened, about 10 minutes. At that point I added the crumbles to heat through. I chopped the broccoli and threw the green beans in the microwave to thaw. Then in a big casserole dish I layered the crumbly onion mix, topped with chickpeas, raw broccoli, and thawed green beans. I drained the potatoes and mashed them with some olive oil, salt and pepper. We didn't have any soy milk that wasn't sweetened vanilla, so I left that out. I topped the whole dish with the mashers and put it in my oven.  After 30 minutes I couldn't wait any longer, so I pulled 'er out of the oven to dig in!  I'd say once all was said and done it took about an hour and a half to make, maybe only and hour.  Let me tell you, it's good!  Even AJ liked it and had seconds.  

I like these kind of casserole dishes because you can do so much with them. You can add corn, you can leave out the crumbles, you could add gravy or some other sauce, just use your imagination! I've even seen some recipes where people have used mashed sweet potatoes on top instead of regular white 'taters! Yummy.