Summary

Haven't made anything stellar in the last few days-- but used a pie crust to make this pastie like creation of sausage-meatballs and spinach dip filling. It was so good I got a small sliver of it, what I tasted to make sure it was properly cooked. The family ate it all before I got home from work.

Yesterday we had sandwiches. Mine was on a big hunk of baguette with turkey, vegetarian bacon, romaine, homemade apple butter and red delicious apple slices that I microwaved a few seconds to soften them.

Pockets

Not an elaborate dinner by any means... My daughter did most of the preparation on this one.

-2 pie crusts
- one fairly large package broccoli with four cheese sauce
- diced chicken
- buffalo blue cheese dip
- fresh ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 425.

Arrange pie crusts in cookie sheet.

We'll eventually fold over the pie crusts and pinch them closed so we want to fill only one side.

Place chicken, then coat with buffalo blue cheese dip, sprinkle with pepper, smother with broccoli in cheese sauce and pinch closed.

Bake about 20 minutes.

Venison vegetable pie

I browned one portion of ground venison and added one can vegetarian vegetable soup and the leftover carrot cashew soup. A touch of pepper. About 1/2 cup water. Extra greenbeans, peas, and California blend.

Pour into pie crust, top with another.

Bake until golden and crisp.

Dirt and worm pie

My husband and daughter, when they went to the store Monday night after my accident, bought lots of instant pudding (and no milk!). They picked out chocolate, butterscotch, and Oreo creme. Oh, and vanilla, since I'm a vanilla girl. Except they accidentally bought sugar-free, fat fat free.

My husband LOVES chocolate pudding, especially the kind that comes in a can. He does not share my gourmet tendencies.

My daughter likes to go to a certain franchise restaurant not because she likes the food, but because they have a "dirt and worms" dessert. She finds the food at this chain mediocre and never eats the pudding, but crush some Oreos and add gummy worms and she's thrilled.

So my husband made her a pie with a store-bought Graham cracker crust (which he lamented was nowhere near as tasty as his own), instant chocolate pudding, crushed berry Oreos (the ones I bought for $2 at Target), and gummy worms (from someone's Easter basket).

Smoked pork pockets

My daughter and I made "pockets" today. Like a cross between a pasty and a hot pocket. I had some pie crust in the freezer and I needed to use up the last of that pork.

So, we cut the pie crusts into four pieces each. Daughter brushed each one with melted butter. Then we stuffed each one with a few chunks of smoked pork, mozzarella, asiago, and cheddar cheese, and several peas.

Then we closed them, pinched them and brushed the top with butter and made nice little indentation with a fork. I cooked them at 350 for 20 minutes. I intend to freeze them for quick meals later.

Pot pie

Made a broccoli pot pie tonight.

Nothing fancy.

- 2 ready made pie crusts
- fresh broccoli florets from my mother in law
- about 1/2 cup shredded mexican blend cheese
- one can Aldi chicken-broccoli-cheese soup
- about 1/2 can almond milk
- 1 teaspoon curry

(I took the last three ingredients and mixed them on the stove to get them melted together)

Mini broccoli pot pies

The last item for pre-prep is broccoli pot pies... I put little aluminum foil discs in the bottom of cupcake tins to keep them from sticking and rip ready-made pie crusts into pieces about the size of my hand.

We made WAY more filling than we needed. So we made a broccoli cheese calzone kind of thing for another day. And froze it. We started out with 24 cupcake tins with the crust in them.

In a bowl, we mixed:

• Three crowns fresh broccoli cut into bite size pieces
• 2 cans broccoli cheese soup
• about two teaspoons garlic pepper

We scooped a large heaping tablespoon into each tin, pinched the crust closed and then baked at 375 until brown (about 20 minutes.)

Daddy's pie crust

My husband made a pie crust last night while I was in class. He is responsible for my cookie crusts for certain pies. I believe it started because he didn't approve of the size of my crumbs.

Today I will make a variation of Vegetarian Time's Non-Dairy Pumpkin cheesecake. We favor two types of cookie crusts for pumpkin: either ginger snaps or oreos.

My husband made a gingersnap crust last night. This required:

• About a sleeve and a half of spiced wafers (not quite half the box) reduced to crumbs
  
• Most of a stick of butter, about five tablespoons

Take room temperature butter and mix with the crumbs in the bottom of pie dish. When dish is covered, bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

Broccoli pot pie

So, I never did get to eat that broccoli pot pie, but I did get to make it and we'll have it for dinner tonight.

I used a ready made pie crust, layered some V8 cream of broccoli soup, some frozen broccoli, some hearty doses of garlic pepper. I sliced and cooked two potatoes. Added more soup, the potatoes, more garlic pepper, then the rest of the soup.

Covered with the second pie crust. Broccoli cheese soup gives more cheesy flavor, but I wanted to try the V8.

Broccoli pot pie

While we were at Girl Scouts, I assigned my husband the task of combining a big bag of Hanover "silver line" premium broccoli, Campbell's broccoli cheese soup and Pillsbury ready-made pie crusts into a pot pie. We came home starving, so we had a bowl of cereal to tide us over. Count Chocula and Booberry again.

Vegetable pot pie

I can cook cheap. I can cook fancy. I can cook comfort. But I have yet to master cooking without time...

Yesterday we went to my in-laws for dinner (Dinner in One Dish and the last of the season's sweet corn and greens with hot bacon dressing and homemade applesauce AND banana cake for my husband's birthday).

Today for breakfast, the kid had cereal and then a slice of cake around 10. At 11:15 ish I fed her leftover dinner-in-one-dish (she ate TWO big plates) and then while she went to school I planned to make a broccoli pot pie for dinner.

Except we had eaten most of the broccoli.

So I took a Pillsbury pie crust (coupon), added what fresh broccoli we did have, a can of Campbell's broccoli cheese soup and a half can of soy milk. I then got some frozen peas, some frozen cauliflower and some frozen carrots and added them to the mix.

Added the second pie crust, covered the edges with tin foil, and set the oven to heat to 425 degrees at about 4:15 so it can be done at 5.

Voilà.

Shepherd's Pot Pie

I'm in the mood for something shepherd pie-ish or a beef pot pie, but I'm lacking any vegetable or beef based soup.  I started with... a nice double fist sized hunk of frozen hamburger which I fried in four tablespoons butter and then I added about one cup, maybe a little more, of my mother-in-law's beef vegetable soup from the freezer.

I took a store-bought pie crust and lined my deep dish pie dish. Put some frozen chopped potatoes in the microwave to thaw. I tossed some extra peas in the bottom. Cooked the meat until brown and poured the whole butter/soup/meat mixed into the pie pan. Then I threw the sliced potatoes in the skillet for a few minutes.

Next, I sprinkled some cheddar cheese on top of the meat. I very carefully arranged the slice potatoes on top of the cheese. Then, I used a pastry brush to coat them lightly with olive oil. Finally, I sprinkled liberally with garlic pepper. I covered with aluminum foil and put it in the oven at 425.

Now, I am at my best when I am most experimental... So we'll see how this turns out. It makes me wish I had fresh parsley. And it makes me wonder how on earth I ever learned to cook. My mother didn't cook. No one taught me, but over the years, I've figured some stuff out...

So, I cooked it for about twenty minutes with the lid on and then removed the foil and cooked another ten minutes.

It turned out incredible. So much so that my family ate the entire thing in one sitting.

I, of course, added Frank's red hot sauce.