spring CSA week 2, and pi day

People are getting back into their usual patterns; I went to Breezy Willow at my usual hour, and the crowds were nowhere to be seen. I messed up twice on the week 2 pickup though — I didn’t pick up my red delicious apples, and I seem to have entirely skipped the tangerines. I like that Breezy Willow lets you pack your own produce, because then you can get the sizes you want (I like smaller apples, smaller brussels sprouts, and straight thin carrots). However, if you skip over something in the confusion of packing, it’s your own fault. They’re usually pretty good about letting me pick up a little extra the next week to make up for it, but it’s not the same…

Anyway, week 2’s haul consisted of: turnips, acorn squash, brussels sprouts, oranges, potatoes, onions, and apples (Jonagold and, if I had remembered them, Red Delicious); also oranges (but no tangerines!) and the usual eggs and bread (I chose wheat).

spring CSA, week 2

Last week also brought Pi Day, the 14th of March. I’ve been a fan of Pi Day since I was in high school, lo these many years ago, and it always brings a smile to my face. Halfway through the day, it occurred to me to surprise K with pie for dinner. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned ahead and defrosted my pie fillings (I turned a couple of bushels of apples from last year’s farmer’s markets into frozen pie filling) or made any pie dough. I did some quick brainstorming, and came up with a quick-to-execute pie-themed meal. Puff pastry to the rescue!

Chicken pot pie is essentially a thick chicken stew underneath a pie crust. On the way to pick up the kid from daycare, I swung by the grocery store and picked up two rotisserie’d chicken leg quarters*, a can of cream of chicken soup, and a box of puff pastry. Once home, I stripped the meat off the bones and roughly chopped it. I also diced a couple of hard boiled eggs (I figured it was kind of like potatoes, and took less time to prepare). I layered chicken, egg, and mixed frozen vegetables inside buttered ramekins. Then I mixed the can of cream soup with an equal amount of milk, and poured it over top. By this time, the puff pastry was defrosted and was easy to work with. I stuck a circle of puff pastry over top of each ramekin, baked at 350 until the pastry was golden and puffy, et voila: quickie chicken pot pie.

Apple pie is one of my favorite pies, but there’s no real way to hurry up a whole pie. You can, however, make hand pies with puff pastry. So I diced up one of the CSA apples (didn’t even bother to peel it) and tossed the pieces with cinnamon, sugar, a bit of lemon juice, and a few scrapes of nutmeg (just eyeball it; enough sugar and you can’t go wrong). A square of puff pastry on the bottom, apples in the middle, and another square on top, squishing the edges together with my fingers, and into the oven as well… and when the pastry was golden and puffed, we had apple hand pies for dessert.

Pi Day pies

Thank goodness for puff pastry, which makes anything look like a pie. A meal centered around puff pastry is probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but Pi Day only comes around once a year.

* The two leg quarters cost $4.49; looking back, I should have gone to Costco and gotten a whole rotisserie chicken for $4.99. Oh well, it did the job.

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