Turkey Pot Pie

Before I begin I just want to warn you that since my last post had NO pictures, this one has a lot :)

The ladies in our church are making meals for a lady who has a 3 year old boy, and just had twin boys, and she doesn't have much support to help out around the house, and tonight is my night to cook, and I couldn't figure out what to make, until my sister in law asked me when I want to make canned turkey and rice soup (we have been talking about it all summer!!) it worked out best to do it next Monday. So Leon got my turkey out of the freezer, and into the fridge, I thought 1 day in the fridge would thaw out my 13 lbs turkey, it did not....  so this morning I looked up online if you could cook a frozen turkey, and you can!!! (325 degrees for 5 1/2 hrs) I don't think this would be a good idea for THE thanksgiving turkey, but for using it in soup is just fine :) I wanted to make something for the mother with the twins that used turkey, so I decided to make turkey pot pie.

Since we have established the fact that I don't follow recipes exactly, it should be no surprise I didn't for this recipe either :) instead I looked at many recipes and took what I liked from them and made my own.

My ingredients are...

• 4 carrots, peeled and cut
• 4 celery stocks sliced in half and chopped
• 1 onion chopped
• 6 Tbsp butter
• 2 ish cups of turkey
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 pint chicken broth
• and salt and pepper!

It seemed like it took me forever to cook this, probably due to having to opreform emergency surgery on my camera battery charger, and taking the battery off the charger and into my camera 100 times!......

First cut and chop your veggies, I like to slice my celery in half length wise then chop the stalks up, and for the carrots, I also cut length wise, then chop, but I had 1 big fat carrot that I cut into quarters length wise.

 Next chop up the onion, I like to cheat and chop the onion into smaller chunks and use the handy dandy chopper (below), it does wonderful things in the kitchen........

 I have been looking a lot of cooking photos, and I notice that most of them have very pretty cutting boards, well I don't. I am pretty sure my husband has made GORGEOUS cutting boards for every female in my family but me. I have never really cared to have on until now, when I see my plane Jane cutting board in my pictures. Maybe I will get one for Christmas :)

Like this (above)!!!!!!!!!! And no tears :)

Next add the 6 Tbsp of butter to a skillet and melt it on medium heat

 Yes, there is bits of carrot, celery, and onion already in the pan, I skipped a step and added all the veggies first, DON'T do that :)

 Now add the veggies, once the butter is all melted

 Here is my used to be frozen, now thoroughly cooked, turkey I started cooking at 7:30 this morning, not very pretty, but it will just fine for what I need.

 My sister in law did this with a ham and I thought it was a brilliant idea! Put the whole thing on a cookie sheet and pick through it on there, the juices stay in, and its easy to move around and get to everything! Ever since I helped my friends butcher 70 some chickens, I thought my self to know the insides and outsides of birds very well, however, in this store bought one, there were little packages inside that I kept finding! There was a gravy pouch, a giblet puch and info on how to prepare a turkey! I didn't find these until half way through the cooking, weird....... Once the turkey has cooled down a bit, and you have all cleanly and neatly picked through the turkey trying to get all the meat off, put your utensils down and use your hands!!! There are tons of little tiny, very useful pieces of turkey that you, like me, probably missed. most of the meat I put into my pot pie was the little tiny pieces i found with my hands!

 I'm not sure how much turkey I added, it looks around 2 cups, but quite possibly over. Honestly I don't feel like you HAVE to have the same amount of veggies and meat that I do, please just use whatever you think looks good (that's what I do all the time, and 98% of the time it works out just fine)

 Thankfully my mother in law found this BIG pan at the second hand store, because my average sized skillet was too small to mix all the stuff in! I am in love with this pan! It has a very nice thick bottom, and is nice and big, but not very heavy, now I just have to figure out where to put it.......

After I mixed all the turkey and veggies together, I added 3/4 cup flour, mix that in, then I added 3/4 cup heavy cream (I used 3/4 cup only because I didn't feel like getting another measuring cup dirty, kind of pathetic, and not a very good rule to use in the kitchen, but I figured if I needed more I could just add more, and I didn't lol ) 

A lot of the recipes I looked at before cooking use broth to add after the flour, I didn't have any except what I had saved from cooking a whole chicken in a stock pot a few weeks ago, I saved it, and put it into pint freezer containers, so I got one out thawed it in the microwave and poured it in the pot. I let it simmer while I made the crust, with my new found favorite, easy pie crust recipe! This one I do follow very closely because pie crusts scare me! So far this recipe has done very well for me.

Pie Crust

• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup crisco
• pinch of salt 
• 1/4 cup water

I didnt take any pictures of the crus process, I'm sorry, I was running out of time.....but here is the little pot pie I made for Leon and my supper (I made a little 8x8 for the mother of the twins)

I forgot to add salt and pepper, but other than that it tasted pretty good !!!!