My first ever cooking post

This post is dedicated to my mother-in-law whose birthday was last week. For my wedding shower years ago, she made me the cutest scrapbook cookbook with all of Matt's favorite foods. Every page has a picture of him as a child and most of them are of him eatting the food from that recipe. You won't believe how covered in flour it is because we use it all the time. I'm a horrible scrapbooker, so I'm so impressed with her creativity. I thought I'd share one of our favorite cold-weather recipes: pot pie!

The caption there is "chicken pot pie would warm me up!" Haha.

First, you melt 1/3 c of butter, and then add 1/3 c chopped onion. After the onion is tender, you add 1/3 c flour, 1/2 t salt, and 1/4 t pepper. Stir until well blended and thickened. Gradually stir in 1 and 1/2 c of chicken broth and 2/3 c milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until thick and bubbly.

Add 2-3 c cooked chicken (I actually used leftover smoked turkey here and I've used canned chicken as well) and 3-4 c mixed vegetables. My mother-in-law would chop up fresh veggies, but I usually throw in a big bag of mixed frozen vegetables and then maybe a little of whatever else is in the fridge, including spinach sometimes. Remove from heat.

Spoon mixture into crust-lined pan. I always use the kind that is pre-made, but my sister taught me that the refrigerated, roll-out kind is way better than the frozen-already-in-the-pan kind. Also, with the fridge kind, you can use the excess to make cute little cut-outs for the top like Mom Harris would do. I've never done that before, but the kids were making pumpkin-shaped cookies while I was doing this, so I borrowed the cookie cutters to make it more Mom Harris-ish. Put the top crust on, flute, and cut a few little slits. Bake 35-45 minutes at 425 degrees until golden and bubbly.

Ta-dah! This dinner has been taken to almost everyone having a new baby, and it's one of the dinners that my whole family loves...kids included. Except Sammy says "I mainly like the chicken and crust." Typical.