About Me

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West Virginia
When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).

Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):

www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle

I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.

December 08, 2013

Two posts in one day!!

This one is really only important if you're a "cooking for one" person cause if you are I made a major breakthrough today and am pretty chuffed about it.

I was cleaning out the fridge a little and there was my left-over chicken and I thought "well, I guess I could have creamed chicken on a biscuit" but what really sounded good was a chicken pot pie, I suppose because of such a cold, snowy day (see my report on that below.  Hadn't made one of those since I had a family to cook for.  So...after some math calculations, I came up with a recipe that I thought seemed about right for the crust and once I had that written out, I started on the filling.  Used some of my left-over broth (by Kitchen Basics - not me), some milk, some water, etc., and made the gravy part, then chopped up a little bit of carrot, let that cook for a bit, then added some frozen peas, and finally tossed in the chicken.  Set it aside and then made the pie dough which I put in the fridge to rest for a while.  Rolled it out and it seemed to be the perfect amount for my little red casserole so I heated up the chicken mix, added a little more milk, scooped it out into the casserole, put the crust on top and into the oven it went.

Had no idea how it would turn out and I had to keep adding more minutes to the cooking time since I had no idea how long it should cook, but eventually I took it out of the oven:

and I'm sorry, but I have to tell you this was so truly absolutely delicious that I ate all of it.  I should have made one in one of my little 4" tart pans but that seemed like it would have so little "pot" in the pie that I opted for my small casserole.  But the very most important part of this is that I came up with what is apparently a perfect ratio of ingredients for the crust because that crust was flaky, tender, tasty, perfection.  There, I've said it.  I'm going to post the recipe for it in my recipe collection (HERE) so if you cook for one and would like to make yourself a little homemade pie some day, now you can make the crust from scratch.

Bon appetit!

2 comments:

Christopher said...

Mmmm... looks and sounds great... I think you should plan on staying here for a few extra days over Christmas, to try out some of these dishes up here ;)

Chinch said...

That little red casserole is darling -- don't recall seeing it before. Pie looks good too!

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