On Making a Chicken Pot Pie

It’s the strangest thing.

For years, I’ve been mostly vegetarian.  Sometime during high school I noticed I just didn’t enjoy meat very much.  It had nothing to do with the ethical treatment of animals or anything like that, although I wish I could say it did.  It had nothing to do with the health benefits of being vegetarian.  I just didn’t like it as much as I liked other things.  As I’ve gotten older and I’ve learned more about both animal treatment and health, my preference has only intensified, and during the past two years I’ve eaten very limited amounts of meat, fish, or chicken.  I still eat eggs and use chicken and beef bouillon in broth, and I have to be completely honest and say I eat cheese with Abandon.  Yes, “Abandon” with a capital “A.”

On Mother’s Day – after we had gotten home from the emergency room and after we had tried to sleep and after we had spent the day wondering how we’d ever go on – my mother told me that someone was arranging a schedule so we’d have meals provided for us for two weeks.  I was shocked.  And humbled.  And appreciative.  And curious.  The quintessential joke about meals like this is that you’ll eat every incarnation of chicken casserole known to man.  As a non-chicken eater, I wondered how this would go over with me.  Mom asked if I wanted her to pass along any dietary restrictions, but I declined.  First, I wasn’t very hungry and anticipated the trend would probably continue for a bit.  Second, it’s far easier for meat-eaters to prepare meat-related dishes.  Since they were going to tremendous effort on my behalf, I wanted to do whatever I could to make it easier for them.

Imagine my shock when I started craving seconds of these dishes – all of which contained meat.  My servings were small, but with almost every dish I went back for seconds or leftovers.  Something about the meat – the chicken in particular – was necessary.  Maybe it was the love baked in, maybe it was the flavor, maybe it was the sauces?  I don’t know.  I only know that since I lost Mara I’ve been enjoying chicken.

So it was that I came to make a chicken pot pie with my own hands last night. A need for chicken.  It was all about a need for chicken.  The recipe is a simple one, comprised of a topping of pie crust topping over a bed of vegetables (which were once frozen and in a “Birdseye” bag) and a cream soup-based sauce.  I enjoy it because of its ooey-gooey goodness as well as the crust.  I make my own pie crusts and quite like them, if I do say so myself.  In my mind, crust makes pies of any type worthwhile!  I wanted potatoes in last night’s version, so I chopped up a few fresh potatoes along with some extra carrots and onions to “pad” the frozen vegetable mixture and precooked them in the microwave.  To that, I added the can of soup, some milk, and some seasonings.  Finally, I dumped in the frozen vegetables, which had been stuck in my freezer for so long they looked more like an iceberg laced with peas, carrots, corn, and lima beans than they did individual, edible vegetables.

Have you ever tried to “declump” a clump of frozen vegatables?  I tried – with various methods!  I hoped they were frozen loosely enough that I could break them apart with my hands, but I think I underestimated the amount of time I had stored them in my freezer.  We’ll leave the talk of how to avoid food poisoning for another day. 😉  Next I tried microwaving them.  I’m sure I could have persisted in this method and eventually won the battle, but it seemed like it might not be a good idea to precook ALL the filling before I actually cooked the pie itself.  I took to the next best thing to patience – beating.  I beat that block of vegetables with nearly everything I could find – spatulas, wooden spoons, and whatever else I happened to have handy.  A few individual peas fell off the larger block, but I found them insulting more than anything else.

So I did it.  I got a knife, a chef’s knife.  A big, sharp, long chef’s knife.  With vigor I plunged the knife’s blade into the block of vegetables and was surprised to be met with…

ease.

Back and forth I went with the knife, deftly separating the vegetables.  They didn’t put up a fight at all!  I had hesitated in using the knife because I was worried I’d destroy too many vegetables – either crush them or dice them all into little bits.  But my fears were put to rest, and my frustrations, too, and I was quickly able to put the chicken pot pie in the oven to be baked.

I couldn’t help it, though.  While I chopped at the ‘berg of veggies, I thought about my life, the heartache we’re bearing right now.  As I prepared the pie, I thought it would be easier and gentler to heat or pound the veggies in order to break them apart.  A knife seemed too rough, too brutal, if brutal is a word I can use when referring to things of the kitchen.  But I was wrong.  Sometimes it’s gentler to use a knife.  Sometimes a big “weapon” yields faster and more preferable results.  I’ve cried over the loss of Mara.  I cry most every day still.  I’ve mourned the speed with which we lost her – a heart beat in the morning and nothing several hours later.  From maternity clothes to regular clothes in the course of four days.  The actual surgery I had wasn’t even an hour – mere minutes for her to be cut from my body.

Sometimes knives yield better results.  Sometimes speed hurts less, leaves fewer bruises.  Sometimes the most gentle thing that can be done is to be tough.  It certainly doesn’t feel like this could hurt anymore, but maybe it could.  Maybe there is something to be learned that required this fast loss.  Maybe we were spared another heartache, one like we’d experience had we been heated in a pressure cooker of life or if we had been beaten and pounded relentlessly.  Maybe.

As I prepared the dish, I imagined God as a skilled surgeon, using a surgical blade to cut this pregnancy away from our lives and hearts.  I don’t know why we couldn’t have it and I don’t even know if I care about the “why” right now.  It has seemed to cruel, the timing of it and the speed in particular.  But maybe those things aren’t as awful as the alternatives might have been.

The thoughts felt very cliche to me as the chicken pot pie cooked.  But the chicken pot pie tasted nothing like a cliche.  It just tasted good. How can anything that looks like this not feed your body and soul?