#20: Chicken pot pie

One of my friends is pregnant with twins, so she recently went on a cooking mission where she made about 6 months worth of dinners and froze them all so that when the babies come she and her family will still be able to eat homecooked meals even though they'll be crazy-busy. One of her recipes was just a simple chicken pot pie, which I've never made before, but I thought it would be something nice to do. I actually made two and froze one of them, so now Keegan and I will have another one for some other day down the line! And we only ate half of the first one, so there are plenty of left overs for lunches, mmmmm. It was also pretty economical because I was able to get the chicken on sale (half price!), the soup on sale with a coupon, the mixed veggies on sale, and the pie crusts on sale with a coupon. All in all to make both meals the cost was about $12; I know I've made meals that cost much less than that, but I sort of made this on a whim and I bet if I plan in advance I can buy all the stuff on sale with more coupons and save more money to bring the cost per meal down. But I guess really we get two meals from each pan, so it's like $3/meal.

The recipe is just milk, a can of cream of chicken soup, frozen mixed veggies, and cubed chicken all mixed into a pan with a pie crust over the top. I used skim milk and the healthy choice version of the cream of chicken soup, so really the unhealthy part of the recipe was the pie crust. But that's okay, it's a small portion of the actual meal. It was really hearty and I was stuffed by the time I ate what I had served myself, which really wasn't that much food. Keegan was able to eat a much bigger piece than me AND he had seconds. And there was still half of it left in the pan! I can tell this will be a good meal for when we have kids.

Giant mixing bowl with two pies worth of ingredients!




Ready to start baking (or freezing)








Mmmmm, dinner








Now I'm looking forward to trying out a few Crockpot recipes I found online. I have a Crockpot but I've never used it; I bought it for like $2 at a yard sale when Keegan and I were getting ready to move in together, but I never got around to using it. I guess I'll just see if it works first, and if not, then I know what to buy for our kitchen next. But for such a cheap price I figured I'd buy it, just in case. I got a lot of nice kitchen stuff at yard sales actually, really nice baking sheets and casserole dishes.