An area of family/married life that can quickly become contentious is meal planning, grocery shopping, and me in the kitchen. I do enjoy cooking and trying new recipes and Emily reassures me she loves the idea of me cooking so she doesn’t have to; I find all this encouraging. You and your family may find yourselves in similar situations whether (and preferrably) at home or actually in the canned goods aisle at Kroger. It wasn’t very long into our marriage that we realized (the sooner the better!) that things would go a lot smoother if one of us would take on the cooking responsibility and if we would plan out a grocery shopping list and meal plan before wandering listlessly in the store trying to put meals together abstractly while bombarded with all the choices each aisle offers. This may have been obvious to you and yours from the onset of family shopping; for us, we learned!

Anyways, I say all this to say, You can do it! Moreover, since we’ve just recently bought our groceries for the next week or so I thought I would post about the recipes I make and introduce them to you as possible meal options at your house. Tonight we had chicken pot pie. In fact, not just any pot pie but “Delicious Chicken Pot Pie.” The recipe I followed can be found on Recipezaar.com, the first place on the web I go to for new recipe and meal ideas. Since we both like beef, chicken and fish (pot) pies, and considering this recipe has 260-ish reviews, I thought it was a sure path to tastebud victory. And indeed it was.

Ingredients and Cost

• 1 cup potato, diced
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1 cup chopped carrot
• 1/3 cup melted margarine
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken broth [I made broth from two bouillon cubes]
• 1 cup half-and-half [I used milk]
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 4 cups chopped cooked chicken
• 2 pie crusts (either store bought or your own recipe)

We got a big bag of West Virginia potatoes from a neighbor which is always a major blessing. Onions aren’t expensive. (I wish I could find my receipt to give more exact figures.) A bag of celery is around $2 or less I want to say, which is actually a good deal considering celery makes a great snack with either peanut butter or ranch dressing. Likewise, I was delightfully surprised by the cheap price of a bag of carrots which I want to say was around $1.20. The next couple of ingredients you most likely won’t need to buy so I won’t include them in the cost of this recipe (butter, flour, chicken broth [I used bouillon cubes], milk, salt and pepper.) Fortunately we had the chicken (breasts) already. A 4lb bag at Wal-mart is about $8 and can go pretty far. I used only two chicken breasts for this recipe. This is what we had in the freezer. For the pie crusts, upon numerous recommendations, I now too recommend just buying them from the store. A pack of two crusts at Wal-mart in the frozen section was $1.20.

Total cost then brings us to approximately $5 (more or less depending on what you have on hand). May I remind you that five bucks is brillant for a meal. For that you’ve purchased fresh vegtables and did I mention this recipe ended up making two 9 inch pies from the above ingredients? One pie left us with leftovers and one for the freezer. A family of four with a side dish or two could easily finish off a pie thereby leaving another to be frozen and enjoyed at a later date.

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Saute onion, celery, carrots and potatoes in butter for 10 minutes.
3. Add flour to sauteed mixture, stirring well Cook one minute stirring constantly.
4. Combine broth and half and half
5. Gradually stir into vegetable mixture
6. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly until thickened and bubbly
7. Stir in salt and pepper; add chicken and stir well
8. Pour into shallow 2 quart casserole dish and top with pie shells
9. Put slits to allow steam to escape.
10. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly and cooked through.

Chop your veggies beforehand and you’ll be ready to rock. I didn’t actually measure them out to see if they were a cup. Next, I wasn’t quite sure about just tossing flour in with sauteed veg, but it was OK once the broth (in my case, bouillon) and milk mixture was added. This is where you’ll get the pie filling you’ll recognize, thick and sorta gooey. After this, just pour it in your pie pans and top with the crusts and bake. Finally, Emily always recommends leaving out salt and pepper initially so that each consumer can add it to his or her liking. I added it into the mix! Haha. She noticed.

Sidenote: in the pictures below, you’ll no doubt notice that I botched up the crusts a bit. To be fair though by the time we got them home from the store they were a little roughed up. Just be glad I didn’t try to make crusts from scratch again!

Consumption Review

Great recipe. It does take a bit of work to chop all the veggies but the end product is well worth it. This actually tastes like chicken pot pie whereas I sometimes try recipes and they end up not tasting at all like I was expecting or previous version of the “same” I’ve had. A General Tso’s recipe I tried once immediately comes to mind. This recipe, however, is true to name. Everything tastes fresh. This is one recipe I’ll hang on to to make again. And as far as mine and Emily’s recipe-o-meter goes, Delicious Chicken Pot Pie is a serve to company. It’s that good. Now for some pictures.

Pictures

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Feedback

Do you think you’ll be trying this recipe? I promise you that if I can pull it off, so can you. What additional ingredients would you add to the filling?