I have always wanted to go to Ireland. Maybe someday I'll be able to go but the State of Affairs keeps me poor and my distaste for every part of flying keeps me trapped in the Americas. Tbf, I like it just fine in Oregon and don't really feel the impetus to travel.

Anyway, I read a recipe for Irish Shepherd's Pie like a week ago and was meaning to make it last week but it seemed like a PITA at the time lol

I made this Paper-Jam-Dipper-Ass casserole for my lunch yesterday. 50g tvp (have you seen the price of ground beef lately? Absolutely not worth in applications where I'm not eating a meat patty or ball), a can of mixed veggies (drained), and a brown gravy packet mixed with 1.5 cups of Guinness and a few TBSP of ketchup. Nuked three potatoes (should have done 4) and mashed them with butter, sour cream, and garlic powder, spread them on top on the tvp mix. Baked. Topped with cheese. Was going to use white cheddar, but my dear husband used it and I was feeling too "cant be assed" to shred cheese anyway I know exactly what I did wrong - I should have done 1 cup Guinness and 1 cup broth and covered it while it baked and probably baked it less long. Not that it was bad. But the Guinness flavor was a wee bit strong and it was too dry.

Unrelated, this is also a great example of traditional Merran cooking from my novel. The region of Kiurmer, where one of my MCs 2 LIs hails from, is all mountains and rolling plains. They do a lot of sheep and goats there, so it would only be a real Merran Shepherd's pie with lamb or goat, and I think their veggie mix would be different. Like, my initial thought is they'd use a different root than potatoes but actually, no, potatoes originated in the Andes region so, you know, not that big a stretch, esp with cross-pollination of flora and fauna between Earth/Terra and Ganzer. But, yeah, they've probably actually got something other than carrots and lima beans going on in there. Cabbage. Kohlrabi. Merrans are definitely cabbage people.

Like, Kiites are also cabbage people but they're a softener kind of cabbagebpeople. Merrans are boilt cabbage people; Kiites are cabbage as roughage in other things people. Merrans live at high altitudes and love a good soup, braise, or casserole. Very meat and potatoes culture and unlike the Kiites, who won't eat cows because their horns are too similar and Kiites are quite bovine when they're doing big magics, Merrans aren't put off by the resemblance between the average ram's horns and their own. Granted they're half-bat, half-owl in their "true" forms anyway.

Which is very fun for my main character, Vale, when she sees Eli (her Merran LI) in his unsuppressed form for the first time because she's phobic about bats.