Favorite fall cooking..

Fall has come here with a vengeance.

I love fall. I love the leaves changing colors. I love being able to go outside without sweating. I love being able to hide 10 pounds under that sweater.

I also love fall food. In summer, down here in the South, it is often just too hot to feel like cooking or eating. You get to the grocery store and freeze your butt off and then when you leave you're melting in the parking lot and by the time you get the groceries home and lug them inside you just don't feel inspired. You feel sweaty and sticky. Especially when you look out in the garden and its so hot the tomatoes aren't producing and your lettuce died back in May and even your Sage and Rosemary are looking kind of baked and washed out. Its just depressing and so you have a sandwich.

But not now, not fall.

Last night I made homemade raviolis- two kinds. One with shrimp and pesto and one with salmon and pesto. I managed to keep one good basil plant alive so I've dolled out fresh pesto twice this fall and can't wait to make some more. I recommend Marcella Huzan for Italian cooking. I'm not a huge "follow the recipe" kind of person, but she teaches you how to make and roll your own pasta and her ideas are so very very inspiring. I did decide to get a pasta roller for my Kitchen-aid because rolling out pasta by hand is just time consuming....Shoulder breaking.


Tonight? One of my absolute favorite: Chicken Pot Pie. Now, Chicken pot pie is comfort food to me and its also convenience food; not even in the same league as making pasta as far as you know, epicurean experience. But I love chicken pot pie and I love easy healthy dinners so here's what I do:

Cook one or two chicken breasts. You can also use left-over roast chicken or even canned chicken.

Take one package of Pillsbury pie crust dough in the red package (in the butter/cheese/milk isle) It comes with two crusts. (You can substitute the off brand...) This is the flat dough, not the stuff already in the pie pan. There is a sweet spot for working with this dough halfway between frozen and thawed. I use a round white china container a little smaller than a dinner plate with about 3 inch sides- I got mine at Pier 1 years ago.

Put one of the crusts on the bottom. Get out a bowl- open 2 cans of veg-all, drain them and add them to one can of cream of chicken soup (Now look, I am fully capable of making not only the "cream" for the chicken pot pie by hand using flour, milk and spices- but also the crusts, but come on people, sometimes its more fun to throw it in the oven and have a drink with all that extra time.) and mix them with the chicken. Now, here is where you can get creative-- use beef instead of chicken with carrots instead of veg all ...Use roast chicken and rosemary...Sage and pork... I have done all of these varieties and loved them. I will caution that when I did a vegetarian one the cream of celery was a bit overwhelming so I'd choose cream of potato or Cheddar cheese soup. You can also add cheese.

Put the mix on top of the pie crust. Put the other pie crust on top. Roll and crimp the edges. Cut holes in the top for venting...you can do fun stuff with this part... Initials, dirty pictures.... Put it in the oven at 400 until the top is nicely tanned.

Remove and voila, dinner. Happy, warm, fast and easy dinner.

Have a great day.