Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

If you asked me three weeks ago if I'd ever cook again, I probably would have burst into tears and asked you, "When??" In fact, a similar scene took place in my kitchen after a fellow new mommy friend brought us a chicken pot pie during our scary, exhausting, terrifying, emotionally trying, tiring, worry-filled first week home. It was delicious. And she made us apple crisp too - also delicious.

Anyway, my amazing mom was here to help out for the millionth time later that same day and I remember saying to her, "How did she have time to make a whole meal and dessert?? She has a new baby too! I'm never going to be able to cook again!" (Side note, her baby is 7 weeks older than Baby J and she had obviously moved past the emotionally and physically tumultuous place that I was in. Not that it's not a huge accomplishment to have a happy, healthy, well-fed baby and a full meal prepared and delivered to a friend. Because it is. Trust me.)

At 2 days shy of the 3 week mark, I'm happy to report that I cooked. My friend's pot pie was so good (hello perfect fall comfort food!), that I decided I had to have it again ASAP. In typical Colleen fashion, I took pieces of several different recipes to make this my own.  I didn't make my own crust which I am slightly ashamed of, but I do have a newborn at home. Baby steps - ha!

Thanks to my child crying and being generally inconsolable for 3-5 hours starting at 5pm every night, we didn't actually get to enjoy this until 9:00.  We were so famished that I completely forgot to take a picture until after we had finished our first helpings.

Chicken Pot Pie

1 box pie crust
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 onion
1 Tbsp. Kerry Gold unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 potatoes
4 carrots
4-5 stalks celery
1 can cream of celery soup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour a 9" pie dish. Chop onion, carrots, celery, and potatoes into bite sized pieces and set aside, separately.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. While waiting for the water to boil, rinse chicken breasts, season with salt and pepper and cut into cubes. Add butter and olive oil to a skillet and place over high heat. When a drop of water sizzles in the pan, add the onion and cook until translucent (about 2-3 minutes). Reduce heat to medium high and add chicken. Cook until no longer pink in the center.

When water starts to boil, add chopped potatoes. Boil for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, add carrots and celery and boil for 5 more minutes. Veggies should no longer be raw but should not be soft either. Drain water from pot and add cooked vegetables to a large mixing bowl.

Add chicken and onion mixture and can of soup to the bowl of cooked vegetables and mix until combined.

Add crust to the greased pie dish and flatten against the sides. Pour contents of bowl into pie dish. Cover with second crust, cut away the excess and cut slits in the top to allow steam to escape. Bake for 30 minutes or until crust is golden brown and contents are bubbly.  Enjoy!

Apple Cinnamon Waffles

How 'bout them Eagles?? :) Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the Jets but at least the Giants lost again! Sorry, Ryan.*

Rather than try a new slow cooker recipe this week (we had the chili again), we opted to make these before the 1:00 games started.

Yes, we eat at our coffee table like college students #bejealous; and yes, I need to work on my food presentation and photography skills #tastesbetterthanitlooks.

Apple Cinnamon Waffles

I cut this in half and got 4 waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups milk
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil (I used coconut oil)
2 large eggs
2 apples, diced (I used granny smith)
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. cinnamon

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Pour batter, one 1/2 cup at a time, into heated waffle iron. We have this Cuisinart Waffle Iron and I used setting 4 for these. I probably could have gotten away with 5. I think the apples keep the batter from crisping up on the outside as quickly as plain waffle batter does. But, if you like a floppy waffle, go ahead and use setting 3. As you can see from the picture above, we not only like extra crispy waffles but extra crispy bacon too.

I would also recommend removing the batteries from your smoke alarm prior to making these. I was reminded why we took the batteries out in the first place and had been living without a smoke alarm for 4 years: because apparently, cooking anything (even boiling water) sets them off. Annoying as that is, I still don't feel comfortable leaving the batteries out after this incident on the neighbor's balcony; especially with Little Dude on the way. So, we take them out when we cook and put them back afterwards.

I hope everyone enjoyed Sunday Funday this week!

*Ryan is my husband's older brother and I just found out he subscribes to my blog. He's also a Giants fan - feel bad for him. He's pretty much exactly what I imagined an older brother would be like - picks on me every chance he gets, can be moody and annoying, and is a ton of fun to drink with. And I'm sure he shares those sentiments and would say that I'm exactly how he pictured an annoying little sister would have been had he been blessed with one. Lucky for him, I showed up and married his baby brother. 

This is Ryan at a Kenny Chesney concert about 5 years ago...

...and this is him about 6 hours later. I told you he's fun to drink with!

 Thanks for reading, buddy! ;) 

Slow Cooker Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

Another football Sunday has come and gone and this is what was simmering in our slow cooker while Colin watched football and I blogged/Googled ways to get labor started.

 Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

3 (15 oz.) cans petite diced tomatoes, un-drained
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup minced onion
1 cup finely chopped carrots
3 cups chicken broth
½ cup flour
1 cup Parmesan cheese
½ cup butter
2 cups half and half
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried oregano
¼ cup fresh basil, minced
black pepper to taste

Instructions

• In your slow cooker, combine tomatoes, celery, onion, carrots and broth. Cover and cook on low for 5-7 hours.
• Forty five minutes before the soup is done, melt butter in a deep skillet or large pot. 
• When butter is melted whisk in flour, half and half, and 1 -2 cups of the soup mixture from the slow cooker. Whisk until smooth and well blended.
• Pour the flour/half and half mixture into the slow cooker with the remaining soup.
• Add the Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, oregano, and basil and stir to combine.
• Cover and cook on low for 30 more minutes. Blend with an immersion blender until smooth OR add soup to blender (about half a pitcher at a time) and blend until smooth.*

*If you, like me, don't have an immersion blender and you go with the regular blender option, BE FOREWARNED: putting hot things in a blender will cause an explosion of soupy gook all over your kitchen if you don't hold the lid on tightly. (Yes, we learned this lesson the hard way many years ago when attempting butternut squash soup for the first time. It was a fun time for all.) I've heard that you can take the plastic center piece off of the blender lid to avoid such an explosion. Something about letting air in... Personally, I don't trust this option enough to attempt it, so I just put a kitchen towel over the lid, hold it down, and say a little prayer.

I served ours with grilled cheese sticks.  

Mmm... cheesey

Slow Cooker Chili

We love fall in this house. And I love my slow cooker. We especially love Sundays in the fall when we can throw something in the slow cooker, open the windows, veg out on the couch, and watch football all day. This recipe is a fan-favorite on football Sundays and it makes great leftovers (which seem to disappear quicker than most of my kitchen creations). I've adapted the recipe from a combination of different chili recipes and our personal tastes and I think I've finally perfected it. Also, it is super easy to double if you have a large slow cooker and are expecting a big crowd.

Slow Cooker Chili

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef or turkey (I strongly recommend using grass-fed meat. We get ours from our local butcher shop)
2 cans low sodium tomato soup
1 can kidney beans, drained
1can black beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
1 1/2 Tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder
1/2  Tbsp. ground cumin
black pepper and sea salt to taste

For toppings:
Cheddar cheese, shredded (I also strongly recommend not buying the pre-shredded kind. Did you know they add sawdust to this to keep it from sticking together? Gross.)
Sour Cream
Corn chips (I like to get the Scoops kind so that you can make little mini-chili bowls out of them while you eat - #getinmybelly!)

Cooking instructions:
Brown the meat in a skillet and add to slow cooker once browned and cooked through.
Add remaining ingredients (except topping ingredients) to your slow cooker and stir to incorporate. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4 hours. Serve in bowls and top with shredded cheddar, sour cream and chips.

High Five For Friday

So I'm still learning about some of this, a lot of this blogetiquette stuff. A few of my regular reads include a "High Five For Friday" post where you post about your top 5 moments of the week. I love reading them and it always makes me think about my own top 5 moments. And I think its important to take time to focus on what's good in life. I believe this lovely blogger  is the originator of High Five For Fridays and that it's the polite blogger thing to do to link to her blog (help me out if I'm wrong here).

So without further ado, here's my High 5:

1) Football season started. Which means fall which means my baby's due date. And also, the Eagles won. I'm a lifelong Eagles and Phillies fan but I've made an agreement with my husband (who is a Jets and Mets fan) that the baby could be a Jets fan during football season if he let him be a Phillies fan during baseball season. Seemed like a fair deal, right? Well, this drastically limits the time that I have left to cheer for the birds because I guess I'm gonna have to jump on the Jets bandwagon when little dude gets here. We can't be a house divided during football season! So this week, I celebrated a big Eagles win over the 'skins. Here's a fun video for all of you Philly sports fans:

What Brotherly Love Truly Means. from Philadelphia Eagles on Vimeo.

2) Earlier this week I took a breastfeeding class at our hospital's learning center. While the class was mostly a refresher of things I had already read about, it reinforced my desire to make breastfeeding my baby work no matter what. I really believe that it is the only way that babies should be nourished until they are able to eat solid foods. Back in the day, there was no Enfamil or Gerber Good Start. If you didn't breastfeed your baby, he/she didn't eat. And babies instinctively know how to eat and where to find food from the moment they're born. Did you know that if you place a newborn baby on his mother's chest after delivery he will actually wiggle his way over to the breast and latch on all by himself? Seriously... Google it. I don't intend to try this because I also believe that we were given opposable thumbs for a reason but how amazing is that?

I realize times have changed and many women need to go back to work or will be separated from their babies for awhile due to health problems. But there are also breast pumps and cars and bottles and coolers. And where there's a will, there's a way. I know it's not going to be easy but many of the most rewarding things in life are not easy.

3) I made this the past two mornings and It.Is.Good. I used regular sugar instead of stevia because I don't eat any of that fake sugar stuff (more on that in another post), and I did not add whipped cream. But honestly, it's so flippin' good that you don't even need it. And I drank it out of a Mason jar which is way more fun than a regular old glass. 

Update: I made this for Colin over the weekend. His comment when I was pouring it out of the blender and into a cup for him, "It smells like fall threw up in there." I took that as a compliment. 

4) As of tomorrow I will be 35 weeks pregnant and I start my weekly OB appointments. I can't believe that we could, potentially, meet our son any day now! Here I am earlier this week taking my weekly bump selfie shot:

5) I signed up for a free trial of Audible and downloaded The Cuckoo's Calling as my free book and have been listening to it all week on my Kindle. I didn't know if I would be a fan of the audiobooks but so far, I'm really enjoying this one. The reader does different voices for the characters and I find that that helps me keep track of the characters and stay focused where I thought I would constantly be zoning out and rewinding. <-- is it still called 'rewinding' if it's not a tape??

That's all I've got for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!