Chronic Cooking

I had the pleasure of discovering earlier this week that I most likely have chronic sinusitis. After a CT scan, the doctor says "Oh...yeah...you see how there is all this black space in your sinus here on the left, well, on the right it is nearly all gray. That's not good. " An hour later, I find myself with nearly 60 pills to take over the next 21 days. I will say I am happy to at least know what it is and hopefully there are ways to prevent it from happening more often.So, in short, I had a few sick days ahead of me and I decided to try Marshall Field's recipe for Chicken Pot Pie. It was delicious! I may be on the hunt for this old cookbook.

First of all, what I thoroughly enjoyed about the whole experience was I could nearly use up all the ingredients on my list. It is so irritating to buy a bag of carrots for a one-two carrot recipe. I would love to say I never waste food, but with our schedules, it's hard to plan dinner.

In order to make the meal a bit more nutritious, I added diced zucchini and to make Chris a bit happier he was eating veggies

some small diced potatoes. Since I don't have oven proof bowls (hint hint husband) and our pie dishes are a bit shallow, I decided to use our cast iron pot. It was a pretty good idea since you didn't have transfer the filling anywhere after cooking.

I added two more tablespoons of butter to account for the extra veggies and a pinch more flour. I found that I didn't need all of the chicken stock and milk, so add slowly until the right consistency.

But the best of the best was to come, the crust! It was everything a half of cup of butter should taste like. What also surprised me is there is a definite hint of sweetness when eating, but I didn't add any sugar.

I bought a 4 lb bird, so I had a little chicken left over for chicken salad, which was also tasty. Some dijon mustard, mayo, garlic powder, fox point seasoning (Penzey's), red grapes and walnuts and it was perfect on a bed of lettuce today.

It's been awhile since I had a chance to be this busy in the kitchen, so maybe I might like this chronic sinus thing afterall.