Dinner and a Movie!

My friends Ryan, Shilpa, and I decided to start having themed dinner and movie nights! We started off with Howl, the new biopic of Allen Ginsberg. (It was a good movie, by the way. James Franco deserves all his accolades.) We wanted a 50s-ish vibe for the food, so we had vegetarian shepherd's pie and blueberry pie! It was delightful!

My friend Ryan made this pie:

Doesn't it look pie-y?? It was delicious. But it's not Ryan's blog so I'm not going to tell you about the pie.
 
I made the shepherd's pie and it was also delicious. Shepherd's pie used to be a fave comfort food for me before I went vegetarian, and it never occurred to me to make a vegetarian version. My friends had never had shepherd's pie before in any form, and this recipe made them believers. It's a super easy, yummy, filling recipe. I adapted it from this recipe.

Ingredients:
2 bags of Morningstar Farms Mealstarter Crumbles (You could probably get by with 1 bag and some extra vegetables, but personally I liked having a pretty big layer of fake meat)
1 onion
8 small potatoes (or 4 big ones)
2 carrots
1 cup frozen corn
1 15 oz can of vegetable broth
Olive oil
Butter/margarine
S&P

First up, peel and quarter the potatoes and boil them for 20-30 minutes.

MEANWHILE cut the other vegetables and start browning the onion in oil, for about 10 minutes. Then add the fake meat crumbles and let them get warmed up. Then add the corn and carrots, and stir in about half the can of vegetable broth. Spread this mixture into the bottom layer of a casserole dish.

THEN mash the potatoes. Add a smidge of butter and the other half of the broth. Pat them lovingly over the top of the fake meat layer.

Bake it at 400 for about 30 minutes, until the potatoes form a golden brown crust.

Then eat it!!

This recipe serves like... 4 people who like to eat, or 6 skinny people.

PS for our next Dinner & Movie party, we're planning to watch The Birds. Let me know if you have any vegetarian bird-themed meal ideas!