Make it from Scratch: St Pat's edition

For the first time, I'm participating in the Make It From Scratch carnival hosted by Stephanie at Stop the Ride. I'm excited! My very first carnival, too! Earlier this week, I mentioned I made St. Patrick's Day cookies, but those don't count as 'made from scratch' in my book- I used a mix that involves adding an egg, a stick of butter, mixing & sticking them in the oven.

Instead, I've been itching to make shepherd's pie all week. I hadn't ever even eaten shepherd's pie, but it seemed like a good idea, and looked yummy in pictures, so I thought I'd give it a try. I started with the recipe at Simply Recipes.
I was delighted to see that I had all the ingredients on hand. I'm of the school of thought that, when fixing dinner, I'll use what I have, and make it work. And that i did. I went to the freezer and discovered I was lower on ground beef than I had thought- I had only 1/2 lb. A full recipe would be too much for just the two of us anyway, so I cut the recipe in half and used 1/4 lb ground turkey to make up the difference. Also, we don't like onions, so I left those out.
After browning the meat, cooking the vegetables, and mashing the potatoes, the dish was ready to go in the oven. It looked delicious, and I was glad to sneak in veggies to our diet, of which we don't eat nearly enough.
Well, half an hour later, after a few minutes under the broiler, the casserole came out browned and yummy.
A discussion we had over the dinner table: Josh asked, "Why do they call it a pie? It doesn't use a pie crust." I surmised, "Well, we had chicken pot pie earlier this week, and it doesn't have a crust." He said, "Normally it does." (I didn't feel like making a crust from scratch Thursday, so I used refrigerator biscuits on the top.) So I had no answer. I figured that it must be a UK-English word for 'casserole' or something. in the end, the consensus was, we like the recipe from across the pond, and it's a keeper. I hope to be making shepherd's pie for years to come!