Monday, November 23, 2015

Mini Turkey Pot Pies, Weekly Meal & Weekend Fun (November 23)

We had a low-key weekend with some time to catch up on work, housework, and life. My highlights were several neighborhood walks each day and throwing the football around at the park.

Plus, after years of wanting but not buying a DSLR, Andy finally broke down and bought one. He spent the better parts of Saturday and Sunday playing around with it. At one point, during our walk, he laid down on the sidewalk and said, “Stand on top of me,” which the kid took literally and stepped on him. Andy was so into taking photos from that perspective that he continued to take photos with the kid standing on him…

Here are some of his experiments and us goofing around: 

The kid wasn’t very much into “regular” photos.

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He soon refused to be in the pictures...

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But he thought standing on dad’s stomach was fun! 

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 He also agreed to a sunset shot...

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Since it’s Thanksgiving week, I don’t have many meals planned. I’ll make a big pot of butternut squash kale bean soup as well as a spicy white bean chili in the slow cooker (but I’ll play with the recipe a bit and also probably double it to make it last most of the week…). It’s another fun Tasty recipe video.

BTW, last week’s whole chicken in the slow cooker turned out well, but the meat was very, very soft after eight hours in the slow cooker. I think it was probably done after 6 or 7 hours… (My chicken was pretty small…). Also, I had recruited (or so I thought) Andy to handle the raw chicken but when it was time to get to work on Monday morning, he said he wasn’t ready and said “let’s do it tomorrow.” That was after I had already cut up all the veggies and put them in the slow cooker. So I ended up handling the chicken myself, which went actually better than I had thought.

After we ate the chicken, I put the chicken bones back in the slow cooker, added water, another onion, garlic, and celery and cooked the bones for another 20 hours or so on low to make chicken bone broth. I have been enjoying the broth all week.

We are invited to our friends’ house for Thanksgiving this year, so I won’t have leftover turkey and trimmings. I am not a huge turkey fan, but I do always enjoy turkey soup. I also like the mini turkey pot pies I usually make with the leftover turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, mushrooms and peas. 

Mini turkey pot pies 01 
Mini Turkey Pot Pies with a Mashed Potato Crust

Ingredients
  • Leftover turkey, cut into small pieces
  • Mushrooms, sliced
  • Peas (frozen and thawed peas work very well)
  • A little half and half (or stock to make it lower calorie)
  • Leftover mashed potatoes (it’s also really tasty with smashed sweet potatoes)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
What To Do
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Sauté mushrooms in a little oil for a few minutes.
  3. Add frozen peas and turkey meat.
  4. Add a few tablespoons half and half (or stock).
  5. Season mixture with a little salt and pepper
  6. Fill small ramekins 3/4 with the turkey/mushroom/pea mixture.
  7. Top with mashed potatoes.
  8. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes, until the potatoes have a nice golden color. 

Questions:  Do you like turkey? Are you a “chicken” when it comes to handling raw chicken? What’s on your menu this week? What was the highlight of your weekend?

Be well,
Andrea