Thriven's Shepard's Pie

I wanted to get one of my recipes on here. I cook every night with Thrive. It may not be the WHOLE meal, but something on my table is made up from there. Tonight was a success. My 7 year old is picky. Not really, but lately he won't eat something if it has this or that in it. One in which is onions. We love onions at our house! So many times, he ends up not eating something because he can see the onion. My poor, poor kids! We do have the rule that they have to try it. More times than not, Grant will end up liking it, and eating everything on his plate. Today did not disappoint! I started browning the onions, mushrooms and garlic, and he came out wanting to know what that great smell was!!

 
If you couldn't tell, we love cooking with the mushrooms and the onions! We opened the onions at the beginning of this month, and we are already a quarter through a number ten can! And mushrooms... Well, I need get some, like now!

 Ingredients:

• ·         1 pound of ground beef
• ·         4T Thrive onion - rehydrated
• ·         2T Thrive mushrooms - rehydrated
• ·         Fresh minced garlic
• ·         1-2 T Olive oil
• ·         Seasoning (2 T of Thrive tomato powder, 1 t beef bouillon, salt & pepper & garlic powder to taste)
• ·         ¼ cup Thrive corn
• ·         ¼ cup Thrive Pea’s
• ·         Handful of Thrive carrot
• ·         Thrive potato beads – make 4 cups
• ·         Cheese

 1.       Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large skillet warm up olive oil, and add rehydrated onions, mushrooms and garlic. Around here, we like garlic, and so I ended up adding 1 tablespoon on minced garlic. Start browning for a minute or two, and added ground beef . You want to stir this really well, because the onion mix can burn easily! Meanwhile, put veggies in water to rehydrate.

2.       Add seasonings. Just add the tomato and bouillon to the meat as you would any seasoning, and stir in.

3.       Add vegetables; stir

4.       Prepare potato beads – make up 4 cups

5.       Pour the meat contents in a 2qt casserole dish, followed with the potato’s on top. Add cheese to top.

6.       Cook for 20 minutes

One of the things I was always curious about was the cheese! How could someone freeze-dry cheese?!?! But this is one thing my family goes through A LOT of. Not because we are always using it, but because my 3 years old will take it out of the fridge, take a bite, and I'll find it a day later :( So this is a great way to save the cheese!!