Food for Thought is a weekly collaboration between Thick Fit Mom and Flexible Fork encouraging thoughtful eating and easy, balanced meals for you and your family.
Yesterday, I was so busy that I let the day get away from me and I didn't have enough time to prepare this week's Food For Thought recipe.
No worries, I still got it done.
I prepped the shredded chicken last night so that this morning, after I got home from the gym, I could prepare the rest of the recipe. I don't really like working without background noise, so I usually have the news on TV while I cook or do dishes or anything like that in the morning.
It starts with my local news and then it goes to Good Morning America. I like to catch the weather and keep apprised of things that are happening in my area and then enjoy some of the fun stories and banter on GMA.
This morning, I had the news on for approximately 5 minutes before I turned it back off. This election news cycle has been exhausting. I'm tired of the television, I'm tired of Hulu (I'm looking at you super negative, sensational political ads) and I'm tired of social media. There are a variety of people on my Facebook friends list with very differing opinions. Some are family, old co-workers or old school mates and they fill my news feed with rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle.
Thanks to the magic of the internet and Facebook's new fact check feature I see that a lot of the stories shared on both sides aren't true or are greatly exaggerated.
It's draining and disconcerting to see people so wholeheartedly, and willingly, taken in by manufactured narratives. Now I know that if someone with my own views (I am politically neutral) is exhausted by seeing people partake in these debates, outright fights and rationalizations of amoral behaviors, then someone who is invested in this system has to be ready to curl in to a ball and cry.
So with all of that negativity floating around, all I wanted this morning was positivity. So I turned on my Roku, navigated to JW Broadcasting and set my streaming to music. Beautiful, loving music. Then I got to focus on making this delicious recipe to share with my precious family. One of them (my daughter) is extremely excited because chicken pot pie is one of her top five favorite foods and I have never made it from scratch. Spoiler alert: it's delicious!
I hope you can find a moment to unplug from all of the negative and have a meal with your family this week... bonus points if this is the meal, haha.
Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients:
1 lb Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, cooked and shredded*
12 oz bag Frozen Mixed Vegetables (carrots, corns, peas)
1 tsp Poultry Seasoning
1 tsp Black Pepper
1 cup Onion, chopped
1 can (19 oz) 98% Fat Free Cream of Chicken Condensed Soup
3 tbsp All Purpose or Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1¼ cups 1% or Skim Milk
¼ cup Non Fat Plain Greek Yogurt
1 tbsp Butter
1 refrigerated Pie Crust
1 egg
1-2 tbsp water
Instructions:
1. Preheat over to 375 degrees
2. In a large saucepan mix flour, pepper, poultry seasoning and milk with whisk until blended over medium heat. Heat 4-6 minutes stirring until thick. At this point you want to actually make sure that your saucepan is large, or you might find yourself looking like me around step 4 ,feeling pretty goofy when I couldn't fit the chicken in my saucepan.
3. Stir in soup, greek yogurt and butter.
4. Add chicken, onions and vegetables and mix well. Cook until entire mixture is heated. Okay, if you didn't listen to me before and now everything won't fit in your saucepan, cook everything but the chicken together and then mix the chicken and the rest of this filling mixture together in a large bowl. It doesn't help that I made enough chicken to make two batches of this recipe, but then I forgot and added ALL the chicken sooooooo I had a lot of filling.
5. Pie pan: Spray pan well with cooking spray. Add filling to pan and top with pie crust.
Ramekins (1.5 cup size): Flip ramekin over and cut out 4 circles from pie dough. Spray each ramekin with cooking spray and divide the filling evenly. Top each ramekin with dough circle. If you don't have a pastry cutting wheel, a pizza cutter does an excellent job of cutting out these dough circles easily and an ice cream scoop is great for making sure you divide it evenly.
6. Mix egg and water in a small bowl. Brush top of crust with the mixture (egg wash) and poke holes in top of crust or place 4 small slits in each one.
7. Bake for 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown and mixture is bubbly.
Serves 4
312 calories, 10 g fat, 3.7g sat fat, 1113 mg sodium, 40 g carbohydrates, 15 g protein.
*I used my pressure cooker to make the chicken. I put chicken breast tenderloins in the pressure cooker with the minimum amount of liquid (water or low sodium chicken broth are great) required to operate it (6-8oz for many models) and seasoning. Salt and pepper would work, but I don't like to add to the sodium so I used Stonemill Table Blend Salt Free Seasoning, it's ALDI's version of Mrs. Dash. Then I set it for the chicken setting or 15 minutes. I drained it and shredded it by smashing it witha pair of tongs. Quick & easy. Alternatively you could bake the chicken.