Wine Pie

Oh, dear blog, how I've missed you. I have no good excuse for why I've been away (except maybe Candy Crush Saga). As I was scrolling back through pictures in my "Cooking Blog" photo folder, I saw these and giggled and thought it would be perfect, albeit probably not very helpful or interesting or even entertaining to anyone except Jen.

In 2011 Jen and her family came and celebrated Thanksgiving with my family at my mom's house. It was a blast. This past Thanksgiving it turned out her family was going to be alone again, so they joined us for 2012 Thanksgiving as well. We were both taking a side dish and pie. Neither of us are bakers, and the husband had plans to go out with a friend the night before Thanksgiving, so Jen came over here and we threw back a few bottles of wine and made our pies together. I don't remember what hers was...something with pudding maybe? At some point (maybe because I had an extra crust?) we had the idea to make a pie with random ingredients and see how it turned out. Wine Pie was born.

We started with taking any potential pie ingredients out of my pantry, fridge, and freezer. I'm not sure if the Goldfish were out as a consideration or had been left out after my kids had a snack. And maybe Jen's pie was pumpkin of some sort, hence the opened can of pumpkin.



We systematically went through the ingredients to figured out what was realistic to use and what wasn't. By process of elimination, this is what we ended up with. Cool Whip, Nutella, Bananas, Puffins cereal, Teddy Grahams, chocolate chips, pudding mix, Cookie Butter (although I don't see it in this picture), almonds, a Toblerone bar. I think that was it. Oh, I think we dug through my kids' Halloween candy buckets, too.



Now, how to proceed. A layer of cookie butter spread on the crust. By the way, if you haven't tried Cookie Butter, I'm really torn on whether or not to advise you to try it. Crack in a Jar is what it could easily be called. My brother bought it when he was here for Boy #2's birthday, and we all ate it by the spoonful. And it's vegan! Or at least I assume it is because my brother is vegan. It's the consistency of peanut butter but tastes like cookies.



Cookie Butter was topped with another crack-like ingredient, Nutella.



Lovely Jen layering on some bananas. The bananas were a delicious addition to Wine Pie, but the husband and I had to run to the store the next morning to get some for fuel before a seven mile run. Oops. We were a couple bottles deep at this point.







Next: vanilla pudding.



Topped with Cool Whip...because what's a pie without Cool Whip on top?



And to really show off how drunk we were, the toppings. Mini chocolate chips, sliced almonds, crumbled Puffins cereal and Teddy Grahams, and to make it really festive: candy corns.



So, the verdict? This pie was AWESOME. Seriously, it was so good!! So don't let the lack of an official recipe for something hinder your kitchen creativeness. Great things can come from randomly combining ingredients you have on hand!

And the last picture...the pie after having been cut into on Thanksgiving:

Jen's Chicken Pot Pie

I thought it had been a really long time since I updated, but I see it was just last Thursday. That isn't too bad I guess. The boy has become obsessed with playing games on the PBS Kids website, so if I so much as turn on the laptop downstairs he is constantly begging to play games. I haven't gotten as much blog updating done as I would have liked. We have a family blog also, and I haven't updated that one in well over a month.

Anyway, I need a quick fix dinner one night last week because the whole chicken I had gotten out wasn't even close to being defrosted. I remembered I had some frozen cooked turkey left from Thanksgiving #2 back in December, and I had frozen pie crusts. Voila...how about a pot pie?! My friend Jen B. has a really good pot pie recipe (she made it for us when the baby was born), so I found it on her blog. It sounded super easy, and I had everything on hand for it.

Jen's Chicken Pot Pie

Pastry for 2 pie crusts (I use frozen)
1/2 cup of chopped onions
6 Tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup of flour
3 cups chicken stock
3 cups cooked cubed chicken
1 10 ounce package of frozen veggies (I use peas, corn, carrot, green bean mix)
1 clove of minced garlic
paprika to taste (1/2 teaspoon or more)
garlic powder to taste (1/2 teaspoon or more)
onion powder to taste (1/2 teaspoon or more)
dried parsley flakes to taste (1 teaspoon or more)
salt and pepper to taste (1 teaspoon each or more)

Directions:
Preheat oven at 450 degrees. Cook frozen veggies according to package directions and set aside.

In large saute pan, cook onion in butter until tender (but not brown). Add garlic and cook for another minute. Blend in flour, parsley, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Add chicken stock all at once. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Once thick and bubbly, add cooked chicken cubes and cooked veggies.

Thaw and prepare pastry crust according to package directions. Pour filling into one pie crust. Top with second pie crust, pinch edges together to seal two pie crusts together, and cut vent slits in top. Butter top of pie. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until pie crust is done.

*****

All notes and directions above are Jens'. I used turkey for mine because it's what I had. The only frozen vegetables I had were a peas and carrot mix and about half a bag of frozen broccoli, so that's what I used. Instead of cooking the vegetables separately I just added them in with the meat and let them heat up in the sauce. I thought mine tasted a little bland so I added in some poultry seasoning and Lawry's seasoned salt to kick it up a little. And can I also add that I wish I knew how to make a pretty pie crust edge? I just can't ever seem to get it. Sigh.

I love pot pies. They're so homey and comforting and tasty and good. The husband isn't a super big fan of them, but I really like them. I thought this was fantastic. Everyone ate it really well which for me is a sign of a winning dinner. The filling made enough for two pies, so I froze the other half and will have it at a later time when I need a quick fix dinner. Oh, I forgot...I cut down on the amount of butter to make it a little healthier. I used about 2 Tbsp of butter and 1 Tbsp olive oil. I was worried my roux wasn't going to turn out okay, but it was fine. Or at least I thought it was fine. The decrease in butter may have been part of the reason mine needed a little extra flavor, too. I loved how fast this came together and was ready to eat. this will definitely be my go-to pot pie recipe!!



Hmmm...I should have taken a picture of it sliced so you could see the yummy inside!

Strawberry Pie

In a moment of weakness I bought four pounds of strawberries at Costco this week. Okay, it wasn't really a moment of weakness...the boy and I love strawberries, and the per pound price worked out to be way cheaper than buying them at the grocery store. In one of my many cookbooks, I had recently seen a recipe for a strawberry pie. And of course I couldn't find it for the life of me once I actually had strawberries to use. :(

(The first part of this may seem like a tangent but really it's not...stick with me here.) The husband is from Louisiana...don't know if I've shared that. Probably I have. Anyway, the first time we went to visit we drove from Phoenix to New Orleans (which we quickly vowed we would never, EVER do again...Texas is just too damn big to drive across). Somewhere in Louisiana, he pointed out that we were in the strawberry capital of the south, or something like that. So as I was wracking my brain to figure out where that freakin' pie recipe had been, I saw my "Best of the Best Louisiana" cookbook and checked it. This wasn't where I had seen the recipe as I hadn't looked at that cookbook in quite some time, but there was a strawberry pie recipe in there, so I jumped all over it.

Strawberry Pie
1 quart fresh strawberries
3/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp corn starch
1 cup whipped cream
1 9-inch pastry shell (baked)

Place all but one cup berries in the bottom of baked pastry shell. Spread out well and set aside. In a saucepan, simmer the other cup of berries in 3/4 cup water for 5 minutes. Add sugar and blend well. Add corn starch. After mixture thickens, add lemon juice. Cook until clear. Pour sauce over berries in shell. Chill in fridge and top with whipped cream.

*****

I think I used more strawberries than called for. I put one quart less one cup into the pie crust (oh, I halved the strawberries by the way) and it didn't look like enough, so I cut up a few more. I also don't think I had the stove hot enough for simmering. After I put in the sugar and corn starch, it wasn't getting thick at all so I turned up the heat a bit, and that did the trick. The strawberries started to fall apart a bit, too, which is what I had expected in the first place. And mine didn't turn clear like the recipe says, it was a nice reddish-pink color.

I of course had to sample a piece last night, and it was really yummy. I didn't have any whipped cream, but I thought it was fine without. This was pretty easy to make, too. Definitely something I'd make again.

Peanut Butter Cream Pie

I was so impressed with myself for getting those three recipes posted in one day and then never got around to posting the fourth. Sigh. So here it is. It's from a random baking cookbook I got at Costco something like nine years ago. It has awesome recipes in it. I haven't made anything from it that's been bad. Just wait until I make my special brownies sometime. Not that kind of special!! I think I first made this pie for Easter dinner with my friend Gina and her husband Mike. It was awesome. I kind of forget about it, so when I make it it's a huge treat.

Peanut Butter Cream Pie
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1 baked 9-inch pie crust
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
1 package (4-serving size) instant French Vanilla pudding mix
5 peanut butter candy cups, divided
2 cups thawed Cool Whip

Combine peanut butter and powdered sugar with fork in medium bowl. Place evenly in bottom of pie crust. Place milk and sour cream in large bowl. Add pudding mix. Beat with wire whisk or electric beater 1 to 2 minutes or until thickened. Pour half of filling over peanut butter mixture. Coarsely chop 4 candy cups; sprinkle over filling. Top with remaining filling. Spread Cool Whip over filling. Cut remaining peanut butter cup into 8 pieces; place on top of pie. Refrigerate until ready to serve.