Chicken Pot Pie

Last night was cold and miserable out so I decided that the chicken breast in my fridge would be good in a nice, hot, chicken pot pie. I found a recipe in my Company's Coming Chicken cookbook, but I changed it a little to my likings. If you want the original recipe it is called "Meal Under Cover". I still call it Chicken Pot Pie. Husband and I loved it. Boys liked it. Older girl gave it a 4/10. Little girl ate the meat and the crust and would not touch the veggies with gravy on them. It looked lovely in the casserole:

Here's what I used:

Chicken Pot Pie
1 9” pastry crust, unbaked

2 Tbsp. butter

1 ½ cups chopped onion

2 Tbsp. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. pepper

1 ½ cups water

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 cups cubed cooked chicken

1 cup cubed cooked potato

1 cup sliced cooked carrots

1 cup cooked peas

½ cup cooked corn

Melt butter in a large fry pan. Add onion. Sauté until soft and browned.

Mix in flour, salt and pepper. Stir in water until it boils and thickens. Add Worcestershire sauce.

Put chicken and cooked vegetables into the sauce. Pour all into a 2 quart (2 L) casserole. Smooth top.

Roll out pastry a little larger than casserole. Place over top and 1 inch up around sides. Slit. I even brushed the top with milk to give it a golden glow.

Bake at 400°F for 30 minutes. Serves 6.

And if you don't have COOKED chicken, potatoes, carrots, corn and peas? Do what I did: cook them! I peeled some carrots and potatoes and chopped them small. I boiled the potato cubes for 10 minutes and then added the carrots for 3 minutes and then added the frozen corn and peas for the last 2 minutes. 

While the vegetables cooked, I cut raw chicken into 3/4 inch cubes, put 1 Tbsp. butter in a hot pan and fried it. When the vegetables were done, I drained them and set them aside until the onion gravy was ready. It all worked out nicely. I even found time to make an old favorite in there somewhere. It was just like the apple pie I've made before!

It sure was delicious on a cold winter night!

Snow Day Smoothie

Welcome to another winter storm day here on the East Coast! Hope you stayed warm and safe! Guess what my children wanted for a snack on this snowy afternoon? That's right, a smoothie! I guess I keep it too warm in the house! No matter, I made them a smoothie. They declared it was the best one ever.

So, what went into it to make it the best ever? I'll tell you.

Snow Day Smoothie (Blueberry Banana Smoothie) 

3/4 cup milk

2 x 100g blueberry flavored yogurt, frozen (the children give higher ratings with IOGO yogurt)

1 banana with brown spots, frozen or fresh (it must be riper than the ones in photo)

1/4 cup of frozen blueberries (wild or tame)

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Serves 4 children nicely!

After their smoothies, the children and I went out to try to scrape our driveway. It was very frozen out there and rather impossible to move anything. When we came in, I made them all some hot chocolate with marshmallows. That seemed a little more expected. Hopefully the snow will let up soon and maybe they'll even get to school tomorrow.

Soft Tortilla Shells from Scratch

The other day, I decided would be a good day for turkey tacos. We almost always stock soft tortilla shells in the freezer but that day, it was not the case! Well, I didn't let that stop me. I was reminded by my ever helpful husband, that I should check the internet and maybe I could make some from scratch. How right he was! I simply followed the recipe at Best Ever Homemade Flour Tortillas, but I replaced one cup of the white flour with whole wheat flour. I was so proud to make them myself. They certainly have less sodium that way and they were delicious.

My tortilla shells turned out nicely. They are more filling than store bought ones but also tastier!  Enjoy.

Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins

Wow! Three days in a row I'm here. When I looked around my blog, I noticed this entry, still in draft. I never posted it even though I wrote it back in 2013. It's not too late. So without further ado, Here are wonderfully decadent cream cheese and nut covered carrot muffins. These were so heavenly right out of the oven! The soft cream cheese topping was melt in your mouth goodness atop these beautiful, tall muffins!

The nuts were only on top, with the cream cheese, but the orange and carrot showed everywhere else!

This was a recipe out of "Company's Coming Mostly Muffins" page 43. I'll share the recipe since it was so good.

Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins recipe

4 oz. Block of cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
4 tsp white sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

1 3/4 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrot
1 cup soured milk (1 Tbsp. lemon juice with milk to make 1 cup)
3 Tbsp. frozen concentrated orange juice, thawed (I used 1 Tbsp. orange rind and 2 Tbsp. orange juice)
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Topping: Combine first 3 ingredients in small bowl. Add walnuts. Stir. Set aside.

Measure next 5 ingredients into large bowl. Stir. Make a well in centre.

Combne remaining 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Add to well. Stir until just moistened. Fill 12 greased muffin cups full. Spread about 1 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture on each muffin. Bake in 375 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Let stand in pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to cool. Makes 12 muffins.

Note: in the future, I will not convect bake these. I'll use regular bake so the muffins rise straight up. On convect bake, they went a little lop-sided. Terrific muffins though!

Perfect Pumpkin Loaf

Perfect. That's a word I reserve for something very special. My friend brought this loaf to our weekly gathering and it was so good I almost ate half a loaf! I bugged her until she revealed the recipe to me. She could not remember where she got it either, but I'm passing it on to you because it is something that needs to be shared. I hope it turns out as delicious for you. Her original recipe used 3 1/4 cups of all purpose flour but I changed 1 cup to whole wheat with good results.

Perfect Pumpkin Loaf - yields 2 loaves

2 ¼ cups flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. nutmeg

½ tsp. allspice

½ tsp. ginger

1 ¾ cups pumpkin

1 cup oil

1 cup white sugar

2 cups brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

2/3 cup water

4 eggs

1 ½ cups chocolate chips

Grease two large loaf pans.

Whisk together the flours, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and ginger in a small bowl.

Whisk together the pumpkin and oil in a large bowl. Add the sugars and whisk again. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking after each addition. Add vanilla and water and whisk again. Stir in chocolate chips. Fold in dry ingredients.

Bake 1 hour and 20 minutes at 350°F or until a toothpick comes out clean. If using convection oven, reduce heat to 325°F.

Cool in pans for 15 minutes and then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

See what happens when you leave it to cool? Your hungry husband comes home and "tastes" only a "little corner"! He promptly got yelled at and apologies were made, but the perfect loaf was just a little corner less than perfect! 

No big deal. It was, of course, delicious! I'm still trying to figure out if it was the allspice or the ginger that made it so much yummier than any pumpkin thing I've made before... I'll have to do some testing. Sounds like a tasty thing to do.

Three Flours Bread

Hello once again! I'm returning today because of a night of movie watching. That's right, a movie made me blog again. The movie was Julie and Julia - the movie where Julie writes a blog about doing every recipe from the cookbook by Julia Child. I had seen it before but it inspired me again so here I am!

Today's loaf was again from my big bread cookbook. It is called "Three Flours Bread" on page 205. It made me two nice big loaves. I personally call it "Soy Bread" because it has white flour, whole wheat flour and soy flour as the three flours. Since we are used to the taste of the other two, the soy flour stood out. It is a fine loaf of bread and the recipe worked wonderfully well. My family ate it with no difference, except for the eldest, who preferred my usual bread. I did find this bread was quite crumbly and soft. It is much sweeter than the bread we're used to but nobody complained about that!

It looks really pretty, doesn't it? 

Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary cakes

Tomorrow is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  (It falls on the Friday following the Second Sunday after Pentecost). Saturday will be the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was asked to make a cake that would celebrate these two events for tomorrow so here it is:

If you, like I, was wondering what these feasts are about, check here for Sacred Heart of Jesus and here for Immaculate Heart of Mary. It all boils down to love. Lots of love! The cakes are just heart shaped cakes on a base of two 9" square cakes. Chocolate cakes, buttercream icing. Orange peels for flames and the cross and sword are cardboard wrapped in tape.