Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

During one of my countless visits to Facebook today, I happened to come across a Ozzie video advert encouraging families eating around the same table.  It was a really schmaltzy piece, and I shed a tear for the 5th time today (don’t ask).  I am incredibly grateful that we have managed to achieve this in our home, and is certainly a far cry off what our evenings used to encompass pre-France.  (That’s not to say that FRANCE itself is responsible for this lovely habit, but multiple reasons based on kiddies that are older, and parents that are home almost every single night by 7pm.

However, I totally understand the stress of simply getting a meal on the table at the end of a long day, without careful planning, shopping, and still dealing with fussy eaters.  Okay, maybe I don’t get all of that, mostly because I have the luxury of spending around 2 hours on most afternoons just chilling in the kitchen while simultaneously supervising homework and bath time.  Granted, I live in a rather large box, so bath time fights often ruffle though the blare of my iPod music.

It’s been gnawing at me to write up a few posts on quick and easy dinner meals, made from a few ingrediants that mostly everyone in the family will eat, but honestly, I really struggle with it for various reasons. The first reason is that sometimes I think my simple is not necessarily the same as your simple- something that comes easily to me might not be as easy to you.  Secondly, what I keep in stock in my cupboards is probably vastly different to what you have, thus something that I can just whip up from what’s in my cupboards might not be the same for you.  I know that here in France, dinner is often decided on what is bought locally at the morning market, and it’s something I still haven’t managed to achieve.

Anyway, I took a whole (dead) chicken out of my freezer this morning, but was in no way inclined to do a roast chicken with all the bells and whistles, so in moment of enlightenment, I decided on my Mom’s favourite easy-peasy chicken pie recipe.  It doesn’t require a huge amount of effort, and she used to make it for us when we would drive down to the farm after work on a Friday, arriving well after 9pm.  We really didn’t need to eat, but that was Mom for you- she never faltered on feeding us, and despite stopping in at Nando’s in Harrismith off the N3 for chicken wraps and wedges, we would still happily tuck into a small portion of Mom’s Chicken Pie and  sip on a glass of chilled Chardonnay before we bundled the girls off to bed.

I’m pretty sure the entire Boston district has this recipe.  I know Mom probably cut her teeth on computer work while learning how to e-mail this recipe to everyone.  For a while I relied on just opening the attachment while at work (it was a nice cheap-ish dish for some meals when I worked at Compass).  When I moved units I had to ask her to e-mail it to me again, but then I remembered to print it, so now it lies in my maroon coloured leather-bound folder that Mom gave me to keep all of those recipes.  At the bottom of the recipe she has written “serve with love and lots of vegetables”.  It gets me every time.

Below is a Word doc. to print out, although it contains my own personal notes. You can choose which you prefer to follow.

Chicken Pie

Hope it works for you, and gives you many lovely dinner time stories in the future.

Xxx

* As a rather shameful post script, it turns out this doesn’t go down very well with my girls- they’re not big fans of mushrooms, and we ended up resorting to bribery to get through dinner last night.  After we force-fed them, they did comply with a “Mom, that was delicious, you are the best cook”, but it somehow doesn’t feel as good as it should after you’ve had to pick out all those yummy half-confit’d mushrooms.