Excerpt from the Cookbook of Heresies

Vegan Shepherd's pie

Make too much vegan chili. Screw up the loaf of bread that was supposed to go with the chili. Cuss for at least three minutes, and leave the bread to stale for bread crumbs.

Eat half of the chili.

Forget about the rest for a week. Make a run to the Strip and get some cheap box wine to give some meaning to your English degree.

Find what used to be the zucinni that was to fried with the bread crumbs. Make the room mate transport ooky gooyness to the compost pile.

Get a glass of cheap box wine from the fridge. Find the chili in the fridge just before it's due to go bad. Freak out. Have an epiphany and go buy a bag of potatoes.

But drink the wine first if you aren't driving. Do not stop at the coffee shop for chai on the way back. Just go home, the cat gets lonely.

Slice up the bread, and toast it in the oven. Try not to set the oven on fire, like I did. Four inch flames all over a nice cookie sheet borrowed from my mom, and a mess of wet charcoal that was left to sit on my back porch over night...

However it turns out, pour another glass of wine and drink throughout the remaining steps.

Take out the left over chili and leave it on the counter, letting it warm up a bit until you need it. This should be chili that has set for a few days and is good and thick.

While the bread is toasting (not burning!), cut up four or five good sized potatoes and put them on to boil.

When the toast is done, take the pan out, but leave the oven on at about 400 F.

Break toast up into pieces, and place in a bag of some sort (plastic will rip, I had bread dust everywhere). Take your hammer, visualize any ex-lover, and smash the toast into bread crumbs.

When the potatoes are good and soft, drain the water and mash them up in a bowl with some olive oil, sea salt, soy milk, pepper, chili powder, cumin, and any other spices that the chili was made with, to taste/texture. Don't forget a few dashes of hot sauce. Dump the bread crumbs into the mashed potatoes and mix it all up.

Mush 2/3 of the potato and crumbs mix all over the inside of a casserole dish, making something that vaguely resembles a pie crust, including up the sides of the dish. Throw the casserole into the oven until the potatoes are crispy. Take it out and get the chili.

You should be due more wine. Take care of that first. Maybe pet the cat if he's been screaming about being ignored.

Spoon the chili into the dish. Hopefully you have enough to fill the crust up to about a half inch below the crust edge. Take what's left of the potato/crumb mix, and spread it over the chili. Lots of variables can make this tricky. If the mix is too thick to spoon smoothly, or the chili still has a lot of liquid, you may have to crumble it like cheese all over the chili. Cover the chili as best you can.

Throw the dish back into the oven.

Pour another glass of wine. Wash the dishes, play with the cat, make a new collage for your Dinosaur Wall, it's gonna be a while.

When the top crust is somewhere between golden and dark brown, take the pie out of the oven. More wine, to celebrate.

Eat your kickass shepherd's pie.


Bother me until I type out the directions for my new vegan chili.