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!