Jan D'Atri

Jan D'Atri > heavy cream or half and half

heavy cream or half and half

Chicken Pot Pie

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It’s the comfort food of comfort foods; the recipe that your grandma knew by heart and the dish that you get excited about when you find it on restaurant menus. Chicken Pot Pie is just one of those out-of-this-world meals that is so easy to make, or make ahead or freeze! Serve it up for a nice family meal, and I’ll bet it’ll be on your menu rotation often! If you have a delicious homemade pie crust recipe, use that for your pie toppers. This recipe will serve 4 individual (on the large side) servings so you’ll need enough dough for four bowls. When I want to make Chicken Pot Pie quickly, I’ll grab two packages of refrigerated or frozen pie crust. (There are two pie crusts per package.) I’ll roll it out, place my serving bowl on top of the dough, then cut around the bowl. When I fill the serving dish with pot pie filling, I’ll just add the dough round to the top. Chicken Pot Pie is a tried and true treasure!

Watch my How To Video for Chicken Pot Pie here!

Praline Apple Pie

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The old torn up cookbook has no publishing date on it, but it had to have been produced when home economics teachers were a big part of the regular school curriculum. Those days are long gone, and with them many of the treasured recipes that they undoubtedly shared with students like this Praline Apple Pie. The cookbook is called Our Favorite Desserts from Home Economics Teachers and includes 2000 desserts submitted and tested by teachers from all over the US and Canada. Wow, where to begin? So, I started with the “A’s” and this fantastic and unique apple pie recipe jumped out at me. As if a good home made apple pie isn’t scrumptious enough, this one has a glazed caramel topping that enrobes the pecans and gets poured all over the top of the pie after it’s cooked. The recipe calls for mace, which is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed. It’s a bit sweeter and milder that nutmeg, but if you don’t have mace, nutmeg will work just fine. (Grinding the nutmeg fresh is always so much more flavorful than the pre-ground variety). I have to thank my friends Linda and Luther Bruce of Paradise Valley for the phone call I always love getting, “Jan! We found some old cookbooks and I knew you’d put them to good use!” You better believe I will. Enjoy this twist on the all -American favorite!