Cottage? pie 11/9/11

ooo tasty

We love Shepard's pie and one of the perks of living in the "'hood, 'hood" of Jackson was that we were apparently the only people who ate lamb so it was frequently on manager's special for super cheap.  I haven't noticed lamb, but I haven't really searched it out since we moved but I keep finding ground beef and ground turkey super cheap and am always looking for new ways to use it.  So I came up with my own little recipe that I guess is more related to a Cottage pie than a Shepard's pie.

Turkey and beef

Food chopper dealie

I mix ground turkey and beef together to create my mince.  And being totally lazy I chop the heck out of the veg with the little food chopper dealie rather than grate.  I am really bad with graters.  My meat portions are really weird but that's because when I buy meat I will for example buy a 3.5lb pack of ground beef and then I will freeze that into 4 sometimes 5 portions, which I freeze and then will usually use half of to combine with a similarly treated portion of ground turkey.  Now I'm not a math whiz but here are my calculations

6oz Ground beef                 paid $2.39/lb                         $.90

5oz ground turkey               paid $1.49/lb                         $.37

1 large carrots (peeled)     paid $.99/lb                           $.16

1/2 medium onion                paid $.79/lb                          $.20

4-5 small potatoes              paid $1.99 for 10lbs             $.30

appx 1 cup milk                   paid $2.79/gal                       $.17

1 egg yolk                              paid $1.29/dz                         $.11

2 tbsp butter                         paid $1.99/lb                          $.06

3 tbsp Parmesan cheese  paid $2.39 for 8oz                 $.20

Now I didn't factor the garlic, salt and pepper, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce because I didn't have the amount I paid or consider the amount used really negligible.  But for all the main ingredients that makes it $2.47 for the meal. 

Totally awesome with it is french bread, which I have taken to making my self.

3 cups all purpose flour       paid $1.59 for 5/lb            $.22

1 packet active dry yeast      paid $.79 for 3 packs       $. 26

1 egg white                              paid $1.29/dz                    $.11

The water is obviously free, the salt, sugar and oil tiny amounts, so I didn't factor that all in.  So that is $.59 for the recipe.  But I divide it in to two baguette sized loafs (other wise I carb overload) so $.29 per loaf.  Even better is that if you make these at the same time you can split the egg so count the white as free making it $.48 cents for both or $.24 cents for one loaf.  Not a bad deal there.