Chicken Pot Pie

Roast chicken last night with garlic and lemon and thyme.  Such a heady infusion.  We ate it with mashed potatoes and cauliflower.  The pan drippings made a lovely sauce.  This was a big chicken (4 pounds) and we had generous leftovers.  Tonight I'm whipping up a 2008 Wine and Food recipe for a pot pie.  It's made in a skillet and baked in the oven, and instead of a crust, one takes thickly sliced bread and makes a crust, buttering generously, natch.  Sounds pretty good.  I made a broth from the scraps and bones of the chicken, adding some aromatics.  If I remember, I'll post a photo of the pie if it's gorgeous.

We tend to dig into the meal and remember the photo when the dish has been decimated.  Note to Blog:  It's Gorgeous!

Fall chores mostly done.  Still have cherry and grape tomatoes ripening, an extra unexpected bonus.  The dahlias have a new life, as do the tuberous begonias.  Greedy finches suck the food out of the feeder like it's water.  Woodpecker on the house this a.m.  The cats were most intrigued.   

I just finished reading The Help, and loved it.  Since it's been on the best seller list for 78 weeks, I must be one of the few   still to read.  I read it on my Kindle.   Love that e-reader.

One more chapter to go in my WiP.  Wheee!

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"Lite" chicken pot pie

What toothsome fare is that? Ye gods, it's a Gourmet Magazine "on the light side" Chicken Pot Pie. Those are mashed potatoes for topping, by the way, potatoes mashed with 2% Greek yogurt, water, and chives. The pie itself has chicken breast, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, peas, spices and broth. I went the long route and made my own chicken broth from the water I cooked the chicken in. I added a few green beans from the garden. Some wine in the sauce and a tablespoon of sherry made for some very good "light' sauce.

The only problem was that the recipe called for 19 (nineteen, count 'em) ingredients and the green beans made twenty. I made the potatoes from scratch (we frequently used the boxed around our house) and altogther this was fairly high on the labor side, but we ate for two nights and it did not seem like diet fare

Chives from the garden in the potatoes. The dish was colorful and had plenty of eye appeal. I cooked up the rest of the cranberries from 2008 today and also served a side dish of fresh broccoli. Can't ever get enough of those healthful veggies, don't cha know?

Tonight, at seventh inning stretch, we'll break out the apricot bars I made for my Toastmasters meeting today. Pretty good, with apricots from the 'cot king, grown in the flavor zone in California's central valley. http://www.apricotking/. The apricot syrup is incredible on pancakes and waffles. Don't apricots have vitamin A? Ya gotta keep eating them.

Tomorrow, we're back to salad, with a main dish of tuna, artichoke hearts, red onion and white beans. What's not to like?

Then more soup.

That's all.

Writing Bad Guys

One loves one's literary characters and doesn't want anything bad to happen to them. I am really starting to like my Columbian Drug Lord, as I flesh him out. He sees himself as a businessman with "product" and all of these disasters descend on him--supposedly loyal employees skimming money, a missing laptop, employees swimming at the shallow end of the gene pool, bad luck, smart opponents, a greedy girlfriend, huge outlays of cash for his little submarine fleet, and this woman who has disappeared, a woman who has caused him so much grief, a woman who needs to be killed. But where the hell is she? He has a grudging respect for her, and she for him. Throughout the book they will be doing this dance. I love the way he cusses and views the world and what he really wants, which is to go home to Cartagena. But of course he can't. Life is complicated. For all of us.

Tonight I took the scraps of chicken (some pretty big scraps) and made a tasty chicken pot pie with homemade crust, again the food processor recipe which takes one minute and rolls out like a dream. I had chicken fat left over, and all the savory pan juices, garlicky and lemony and chickeny. I bought a few mushrooms, but the peas, carrots, celery and onion came from the fridge. There was one problem. So good we couldn't stop eating. Not a good thing. About a million calories. Thank the lord I didn't add any heavy cream as the Food Network recipe called for. The recipe made enough for three, so there is a lunch to die for in the fridge.

We have been very busy getting ready for the mystery conference, the New England Crime Bake, and I've done mail merges for labels, which I have to relearn every time I do them, although I hope that I'll remember at least enough to do the Christmas card labels. Doing the mail merge is NOT like riding a bicycle. You forget practically everything.

Late fall is here. The colors are mostly drab and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. I put the acorn squash seeds outside for the critters and fed the Highland Scottish cattle their fruit and veggie scraps. The little herd has increased by four new cows with tags in their ears. A second bull has been added. Everyone seems to be getting along. They liked the acorn squash skin and the grapefruit rind and the apple cores. Banana skins always popular. We have taken recycling to a new level.

More anon.

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