Yes, I am blogging about pot pies

I have loved the store bought frozen pot pie for a very long time.  Since childhood and my mom served us Banquet pot pies I have been a fan.  I love the crust, the gelatinous broth, the overcooked vegetables and the schmeat that they call chicken.  I love the fact that you will always burn your mouth on a pot pie.  I love that the suckers take close to an hour to cook.  I love that they are $1.25 or some absurdly low price. 

I have done a lot of work on my family's diet.  We eat organic meat, for the most part.  About half of our produce is organic, and in the summer I try and grow some things on my own.  We eat whole wheat everything and I even try to bake with whole wheat flour where possible.  I use olive oil religiously, organic eggs, organic milk and the list goes on. This is not a competition - but in one area I fail miserably is the frozen food section.  I love POT PIES! 

Now, there is a very specific art to the pot pie.  Every person I have talked to has a preference for how their pot pie is served or presented to them.  (In the lingo of foodies everywhere, we all care how our pot pie is "plated".) 

I have a distinct memory of living with Jeff in a teeny tiny apartment and digging into our first pot pies as a married couple.  We were both excited.  I had baked them and they were beautifully golden brown waiting patiently on the cookie sheet.  Jeff being the loving, doting husband that he is promptly threw them each into a bowl and poked a whole in the top of each.  My heart stopped, I think I might have yelled.  Why did he just go and ruin my pot pie like that!  He stabbed the top of the pie like it was going to attack us, why would you do something like that to an innocent pot pie?  And then the realization hit me, we eat our pot pies completely different, maybe this wasn't a match made in heaven?

After that fateful night when I realized Jeff was a "leave it in the tin and poke a hole in the top" pot pie eater, I knew my only hope was to teach the children how it was done.  I myself eat pot pies correctly.  I gingerly and quickly (because as previously discussed those things are hot) flip the pot pie onto my plate and lift the tin.  Tin removal is an absolute necessity, it is the difference between receiving third degree burns versus first degree burns.  Then I poke a hole in the bottom, which is now facing up, to let the steam out.  I then proceed to eat all of the insides.  Mama always told me to save the best for last, I love the crust the most and therefore I eat all of the filling and side crusts and then at the end when everything is gone there is a perfect circle of top crust that I can then enjoy.  Lovely.

This year we introduced the pot pie to Jac and Mia.  Of course it went over fantastically, why wouldn't it?  The problem is the plating.  First we tried it my way, the correct way.  However, functional as it may be for steam releasing and crust eating, it isn't as pretty as Jeff's way.  We all know how important presentation is to the young ones.  So then we tried it Jeff's way and after letting it cool for what seemed like hours, they both still cried from the burning!  Jac has now seen the error of his ways and insists on having his mommy's way.  Mia however, very difficult to convince.

The last time we had pot pies we introduced a hybrid method.  Here goes.  I flipped Mia's pot pie out of the tin and upside down, then I flipped it back over so that it was sitting upright, but out of the tin.  Perfection.  She was thrilled that it looked like daddy's, but now she wouldn't scald herself.  Of course there were some tears due to daddy trying to help pull off her crust which resulted in her absconding mommy's pot pie which hadn't been touched yet. 

I am proud to say that I am raising two children who love pot pies!  How do you eat yours?