Hamburger pie

I've been feeling pretty uncreative about food lately. In fact this week we've eaten out like 3 times, which is A LOT for us.

So today instead of making my good ole standby; tacos... I dug through my cookbooks looking for something different. I saw "hamburger pie", which looked pretty awesome in theory... But WHOA! when you look at the ingredients it's a little scary! Ground beef, mashed potatoes with butter and milk, canned everything, cheese... Just a little more than I could handle.

So I took the basic premise and reworked the recipe to suit me. It's got about 1/4 of the fat, 1/8 of the salt, and I even added a little nutritional value. I'm still going to call it "hamburger pie" even though it's pretty much completely different!

Ingredients:

1 lb lean ground turkey
6-8 medium sized gold potatoes (I used more and have leftover)
1/2 an onion (i used red, although I think any onion would work)
a few cloves of garlic
fresh peas, green beans, tomatoes.... anything else that sounds yummy to toss in
canned corn (i suppose you could use fresh corn too, but that sounds like a lot of work)
1/2 can cambell's tomato soup (i used the low sodium kind)

1 cup corn meal
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
dash salt
1 egg
1 cup milk (i used non fat)

Start with boiling the potatoes. While those boil, dice the onion and a clove or two of garlic -brown the turkey with it. When it's cooked add the 1/2 can of tomato soup and whatever veggies you're tossing in. (I also added some hot sauce at this point but don't think it's necessary) Set this mixture aside.

When the potatoes are soft drain them and put them into a bowl. Press a few fresh cloves of garlic into the hot potatoes then mash them a few times with a fork or a pastry blender (leave them pretty lumpy).

What I did next was mix the meat and potatoes together. But you could also layer them into a casserole dish; meat mixture on the bottom, then a layer of potatoes. I think it's just a question of style. :)

On top of my meat/potato mixture I sprinkled a teency bit of grated cheddar cheese.

Then mix the corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, egg, and milk together and spoon in over the top of the casserole

Bake at 375 until the "crust" is golden brown (about 20-30 mins).

I just ate it for dinner and it's pretty darn tasty. I'm willing to bet my version is just as good (if not better!) than betty crocker's ridiculously unhealthy version!