Advent 1 2015 01 Monday

picture from here http://bit.ly/1jt3vMO

<Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time. - Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac>

Advent 1 2015

<...The new liturgical year begins, not with the baby Jesus in a manger but with a whole array of texts rooted in apocalyptic and eschatological sensibilities. We should let this first Sunday of the new year remain strange and unsettling. Let’s keep it odd and disruptive enough to inspire hope. "Business as usual” simply will not do in a society marked by gross income inequality, violence against women, and so many unexamined social policies rooted in white supremacy. We should be glad to see each of those “worlds” end. We need Advent’s unsettling insistence on hope. Unsettling, because hope inspires us to live in anticipation of a new world, even when we can’t see how things could possibly change. Unsettling, because hope urges us to act on behalf of a new world that we can’t yet see. Unsettling, because hope might convince us to set aside old, familiar things, even the most comfortable things, to make room for the new thing that God is constantly bringing about...> Jay Emerson Johnson+

Pillsbury™ Refrigerated Pie Crusts

I just posted the recipe for My Legendary Chicken Pot Pie and realised I'd never really come out of the closet about using Pillsbury™ Refrigerated Pie Crusts before.

I mean, I've never LIED and said I made my crusts, to my knowledge, but I never come right out and tell people I DON'T ... anyway, it made me realise how much I rely on them.

1. DO ! NOT ! ACCEPT ! IMITATIONS ! ! !  There are many things I will go store brand for, but THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM ! Trust me. I've tried.
2. In the last couple of years they have revamped the formula. I've worked with these crusts for DECADES. They changed them about two years ago and THEY ! WILL ! NOT ! BE ! manipulated. You used to be able to roll them out a little and bend them to your will. Not no more ... You gotta unroll them with your hands and you're stuck with that shape and those dimensions. Don't try to roll them out at all or you'll have a mess. I mean, you can cut them and use them for tarts and to line muffin tins, but you can't roll them out.

Stuff I use them for:

THEE PERFECT APPLE PIE RECIPE from Pillsbury™. I'm not kiddin' you, Never fails. It's on the side of every box. The only change I make is I dice crystallized ginger and put it in there. I also use lots of different kinds of apples.

I just had some Taco Tuesday left over and an extra shell from Chicken Pot Pie the other night, so I lined a cake tin with it, scooped in the Taco Tuesday meat and put cheese on top of it. I simply folded the edges over the whole thing and put it in at 350 for 20 minutes.

Actually, I Remember Mama (oh, that's funny ! Mama is what we called Mommy's Mother !) Mama always used to have a pie shell sitting on the counter during fruit season and make "dump" pies. While she and Great Aunt Edna were canning, they'd just flick leftover fruit in to the pie crust, put this crumble top on top, and bake for a nice fruit pie.

I also dearly love to fry up a ton of sweet onions in butter, make a little roux and bake a nice onion pie with celery.

I've cut them in circles and used them to line cupcake wells. I USED to be able to reform the leftover crust for more circles, but lately I can't with the new formula, it doesn't work that well.

Hope this helps. Have fun with them ! The crust is ALWAYS GORGEOUS.

My Legendary Chicken Pot Pie

I've been developing this recipe for decades and I gotta tell you, it's one of my favorite things to eat ever. It always turns out like a poem.

You are going to need:

Let’s say four big chicken breasts
Let’s say three cans of cream of CELERY soup (this is a huge secret)
Chicken stock
Chicken bullion
Taragon
2 packages of frozen mixed vegetables
1 package of pearl onions
Celery
1 stick of butter
2 cans of sliced potatoes – optional
9 x 13 x 2 casserole dish
You may not need all 4 crusts? But you wanna start with 2 boxes of Pillsbury refrigerator pie crusts
flour (don't judge me)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Remove the crusts from the box and the plastic packages per the directions of the box

My husband likes to have a bottom layer of sliced canned potatoes. I don't know that it's necessary, but he loves (!) it. To get some of the salt out of them, I pour them out of the tins, drain them, and have them to soak in water with some shakes of hot sauce while all this is going on:

Fill a stock pot with chicken stock, a couple of teaspoons of chicken bullion, a hacked up onion, and about five celery stalks cut in big pieces. I also put about 15 shakes of hot sauce in the water but my husband doesn’t know that lol.  He just always says, it has a nice kick to it ;-) Boil the chicken breasts for about twenty minutes to a half hour.

While that's going on, place the frozen veggies and pearl onions in a pot to boil in some water with chicken bullion in there or all chicken stock. It CAN come to a boil, but that's not necessary. You just want to get the chill off them.

Take the breasts out and cut them in to large chunks and mix them around with a stick of butter, salt, pepper, dried tarragon, and maybe three stalks of celery cut in to bite-sized pieces. Mix those around and just let that sit there while you do this:

Drain the veggies and the onions and mix with, say, three cans of cream of celery soup.  Once that’s all good and incorporated, dump that in the bowl with the chicken chunks.  Stir that all well and let that all marry while you do this:

Lay your crusts in the pan.  PLEASE NOTE: I've worked with these crusts for DECADES. They changed them about two years ago and THEY ! WILL ! NOT ! BE ! manipulated. You used to be able to roll them out a little and bend them to your will. Not no more ... You gotta unroll them with your hands and you're stuck with that shape and those dimensions. Don't try to roll them out at all or you'll have a mess.

Spoon the goo in to the crust. 
Flip the overhang of the shells on to the top of the goo. Take a knife and dot some vents in the top.

I bake this for about an hour.

When reheating, I spray the bottom of a cake tin with Pam, I slice a chunk and place it in there, and then I sprinkle the top with chicken stock. This helps it from drying out. I put it in a 350 degree oven (my husband puts tin foil on top, I don't) for about 20 minutes. YUMmers.

Sweet Potato Casserole / Soufflé

The greatest thing about serving this casserole at Thanksgiving is it reduces the need to have either a sweet potato pie or a pecan pie for dessert. Although not overly sweet, this gives you the taste of both but in a casserole. It's just DELICIOUS, REALLY easy to make ahead, and then when you go to reheat it, take a spatula, cut down the center lengthwise, and make the troughs the other way, and this will reduce the time needed to reheat. Pop it in after you take out the turkey, and it's ready for table by the time you're all cooled and carved.

Oven at 350

5 cups Sweet Potatoes, boiled and slightly cooled
Mash in a stick of softened butter
Beat five eggs and add, stirring quickly so the eggs don't scramble
Turn in 1 can of condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
dash of cloves
whisper of nutmeg
1 1/2 cup Turbinado sugar
Mixing thoroughly

Pour that in to a WELL GREASED 9x12 glass casserole dish

cover with topping:
1 stick of butter
1 1/4 cup well-packed brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 1/4 cups chopped pecans

bake for 25 minutes until a golden bubbly