Bob Evans excels at three things, chicken noodle soup, chocolate milk, and chicken pot pie which happens to be the subject of today's discussion. The only problem I have with any of these is that I cannot have them, because I do not eat at Bob Evans. But lately I had a huge hankering for chicken pot pie. Today it was distracting me at work. And now I had a dilemma. I couldn't go to Cracker Barrel because I don't think they're going to be homemade (not that Bob Evan's is either but this is my post so don't argue), and I don't want to pay a huge sum for something that they simply heated up in the microwave. But at the same time I haven't yet been to the Cracker Barrel here in town, so I have no idea what sort of prospects I could be missing out on. Then I debated with a co-worker about whether or not I should just go to gift store and scope out the waitress situation from afar. The problem with this is that I would still have to eat out by myself, which I do not do either, and I can't take another guy to Cracker Barrel (or Bob Evans for that matter supposing I did eat there) until I hit 60.
With restaurants out of the question, now I was left to making something at home. I thought about buying a chicken pot pie pre-made figuring it's exactly the same as what I'd get if I ate out. But if I did that I would hardly have anything to write about. Thus, in order to keep you entertained I decided to make my own chicken pot pie from scratch. You better appreciate this.
When I say from scratch, this does not mean I made the pie crust. I'm sick of people saying 'well then you didn't make it from scratch'. I'm sorry, I have a life. I haven't worked on 'Punch Out' in about two days, I've got to keep you people happy here on this blog, my piano needs playing, and at some point I should probably look at jobs since I'd like to ensure that I will able to continue feeding myself. So for all you nay-sayers, you need to step off.
Overall I found the process fairly straight forward. My big problem was that I had the TV on while doing this, and I do not multi-task. Multi-tasking for me is talking on the phone whilst sitting on the toilet (I do a lot of talking apparently in the bathroom, see Howdy). That's about the extent of my abilities. Consequently, I had a few disasters. First I cooked the chicken, potatos, and carrots for a bit too long on stove. Instead of ending up with a nice chicken broth, I wound up with no broth, and a brown pan bottom. Luckily I was able to keep the main part of the food from burning so no major diaster there. The other problem was that I didn't have a science down yet for how to handle the pie top. At the store I decided since these shells come in two, I could use one of them as my pie top since I was making only enough to fill one shell. That's me thinking outside the box again, I'm so clever. Anyway, I had it sitting out getting soft as I was preparing everything. But I wasn't sure of how thick it was, and I found when I tried to transport my extra shell was a bit thin and it easily tore. Fortunately, years of picking up finished jig-saw puzzles without using glue had trained me well for this, and in the end I didn't make too huge a mess of it.
When the whole thing finished, it came out pretty good. Everything was cooked right. For example the potatoes were not hard. I hate having hard food and mushy food mixed together. It messes with my mouth. It's like peanuts in ice-cream. You have this delightful smooth ice-cream then all of a sudden bam! this nut comes out of nowhere and slams into your gums causing nothing but pain and misery. My main problem with the whole dish was that it tasted a bit bland. The spices just weren't right. I think a part of the problem may have been that I didn't end up with any chicken broth. Next time, instead of adding salt I think I'll just add one of those little Boullion cubes or whatever their called. But I'm still very pleased with the whole dish. I didn't burn it and while it may be a bit bland at least it doesn't taste bad. Nevertheless, I still have a long long way to go before I reach Mom status.
Finally a shout out goes to Gurney, whose frozen peas did not go to waste today.
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