Chicken Pot Pie

I apologize in advance, this is going to be another food post. I realized this morning that food is all I've been blogging about lately, and I'm sure that can get quite boring for some of you. I haven't had much else going on, what with recovering from this stupid cold that seems to hang on and on. I figure that my typical daily chores like laundry, cleaning and eating bon bons would be even more boring than cooking, so I'll stick with the cooking for now. I did get some great scrapbooking materials for my birthday, so I'm hoping to get going with that a little bit soon and I will definitely share anything cool there. I have a quilt to make, which is definitely blogging fodder, I just need to cut the pieces first. And life itself isn't exactly boring I just don't have a ton of energy and blogging about food is easy, so bear with me. I promise I will move on eventually. Actually, it will be soon since I've decided if I continue to cook like this no amount of running will keep the pounds off!

I've never made or, to my knowledge, eaten homemade chicken pot pie. When I was a kid, we use to eat the personal sized pot pies only when my parents would go out and we'd be left home with a babysitter, which wasn't very often. We loved those little crusty pies with hot chicken and veggies inside, it was a special treat. I remember picking them apart, eating the crust edges first, then the top crust then the inside with bites of bottom crust. They were so yummy and you had to be careful not to burn your  mouth.

So, when a good friend poster her chicken pot pie recipe I was intrigued. I can make pie crust--one of these days I'll share my strawberry-rhubarb recipe which is oh-so-yummy--but I've never done anything else inside the pie crust. I decided I'd have to try it the next time I made a chicken and so I cooked one on Wednesday and then made my slow-simmer chicken broth out of the bones to go in the pot pie.

I found a recipe online for pot pie and then tweaked it quite a bit, so this is what I did:

Chicken Pot Pie

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup heavy cream (I had some half and half left, so I used that mixed with the heavy cream)

4 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 cup frozen peas

3/4 cup to 1 cup cooked diced, carrots (I made these for dinner with the roasted chicken, so we used the leftover)

3/4 cup to 1 cup celery, chopped

one small onion, diced

7 Tablespoons flour

6 Tablespoons butter, salted

2 double pie crusts for 9 inch pie (I use the Betty Crocker recipe for 2-crust pie crusts, it works like a dream, I did this while the onion and celery were cooking)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Melt butter in saucepan, add onion and celery and cook til tender. (I did this but the onion and celery were still crispy, and since my husband doesn't like celery, next time I will nix that and maybe boil and dice a potato to go instead). Add flour, broth, and cream and stir, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add chicken and veggies to the sauce and take off the heat.

Put bottom crust in each pie plate, fill each with chicken and veggie sauce. Top with crust top, trim crust to edge of pie plate, seal and flute the edges. I've decided I need some lessons on the fluting part of the pie crust, mine always looks horrible. (Take crust extras and put on cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes for a little treat!)

Bake one pot pie for about 35 minutes, til crust is brown and you can see the insides bubble a little. Let sit for a few minutes (10) before cutting. Great served with green salad!

Everyone in my family liked it except the littlest one but she's the pickiest one, and she did eat it but not gloriously like her father and sister, who had 3 helpings.

What to do with the 2nd pot pie? Well, you could cook them both, it would take a bit longer than the 35 minutes, but I froze mine, covered with cling wrap and some foil. It should be an easy dinner for another day, so all the hard work and dirty dishes from last night are worth it for two dinners. I will let you know how the 2nd one cooks up!

Now I must go make beds, vacuum, dust and mop my way through the day and this lingering cold!