Hide Them Veggies Shepherd's Pie

Have you ever had issues with your children eating the veggies you give them? Ha, who hasn't, right? My biggest problem is my HUSBAND not eating his veggies or anything of substance and my three year old normally eats what I give her. I hide veggies EVERY where that I can and the best to hide them in is casseroles and starches like mashed potatoes or baked spaghetti so shepherd's pie is the best place I can think of. I started off by boiling three large potatoes with 3 cloves of garlic and half a bag of frozen cauliflower (I use frozen because no where around here has organic, fresh cauliflower and I haven't started growing it yet.) Once the potatoes were cooked, I transferred it to a mixing bowl after draining the water and I added a stick of butter and about a half of cup of milk. Now I did just say a stick of butter but you can always cut that, I just felt like all the veggies kind of maybe cancelled a little of it out.. maybe. I use an immersion blender but you can hand mash it or put it in a mixer or use a hand blender, they all work perfect. Ok now we are on to more veggies. I cut up about two hand fulls of baby carrots because that's what I keep on hand for snack for me and the wild child and then I peeled and chopped up half of a large rutabaga and halved about a cup of brussel sprouts. You can use whatever veggies you feel like using, I stayed on the sweet side because that pleases the Hub's pallet. I sauted all of these veggies except the brussel sprouts in a little extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper until I could pretty much almost mash the carrots then added the brussel sprouts until they started to get soft (about 2-3 minutes.) I just dumped all the veggies into the bottom of a baking pan, I used a round cake pan but use whatever you have, and then started to brown the ground beef (I only used 1/3 of a pound but use up to a pound for this recipe.) Once the beef was almost done, I put in my beef broth which was one cup of water that had been simmering with two beef bullion cubes while I was cooking the other ingredients. I let that rise to a simmer then poured it on top of the veggies. All that was left was the mashed potato layer and I just slathered those on top and smoothed it with the back of my wooden spoon then topped it all off with a mix of cheddar and monterey jack cheese. I tossed that into the preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes and presto, ready to eat!

I should have taken pictures throughout the process and this picture isn't that great but I did take one!! I will get better at that next time, promise. 

Ingredients:
3 large potatoes
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 a bag of frozen cauliflower or half a head if you use fresh
2 handfuls of baby carrots
1/2 of a rutabaga
1 cup of brussel sprouts
1/3- 1 lb of ground beef
1/2 cup of milk
1 stick of butter
2 beef bullion cubes
1 cup of water

Directions above

GLUTEN FREE: you can make this a gluten free by changing the bullion cubes to homemade beef stock or broth or just omitting that all together because you can still get beef flavor by adding the cup of water to the ground beef before adding it to the pie.

Hide the veggies by mashing them up before adding them to the pie if you have super picky eaters, I forgot to do that and mashed up my husbands before I served it to him and guess what, HE LOVED IT!!

I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions, please comment below!