A Quick and Easy Chicken Pot Pie Recipe...and Goodies Galore!!

I'm making an effort to cook more at home, and I'm always looking for new, GOOD recipes that I can make in a hurry or without much mess or cleanup.

(By the way, I typically do NOT have good luck with Pinterest recipes. Sometimes I have to question the people who describe a recipe -- like the disgusting chicken lasagna rolls I pinned and made -- as the BEST EVER. Either those people are playing a cruel joke on the "pinning" community, or they haven't eaten anything besides frozen dinners.)

ANYWAY...

I made some cream cheese brownies a couple of weekends ago (more on that in a minute), and I saw a recipe for Chicken Pot Pie on the cream cheese box. I tried it the next day.

Is it the BEST chicken pot pie ever? No. But is it good, EASY, tasty comfort food? YES.  I am definitely working it into the recipe rotation.

The recipe is here.

So...back to the cream cheese brownies....

Amelia's school was supposed to have a little carnival/festival thing a couple of Sunday afternoons ago, and the school asked for some baked goods for the cake walk.  Look, I LOVE to bake. I baked Heath Bar cookies, cream cheese brownies, and regular fudge brownies. And, I packaged them so that they looked oh so cute. See?

And...the school had to postpone the festival because of rain.

Alas.

Hurricane Isaac and that Sunday's monsoon really have done nothing for my figure.

Just sayin'.

Clifford

Amelia's "class mascot" is Clifford the Big Red Dog. Each student gets a weekend to take Clifford home and show him a good time. Our weekend was a few weeks ago. Amelia was so, so, SO excited to take Clifford home, and she was all about having me take her photo with Clifford.

It was hardcore. Clifford even had his own bag for the weekend.

Friday evening, we took Clifford to the grocery store to buy some treats for the weekend:

The next morning, we went to Coffee Call for beignets. (Note the powdered sugar mustache.)

Then we took Clifford to the playground, where he enjoyed sliding down the big red slide.

Later that afternoon, we enjoyed a little down time. Amelia was excited to show Clifford Kung Fu Panda 2.

Sunday wasn't quite as eventful, but Amelia still had fun playing with Clifford. And, of course, we (meaning I) wrote about Clifford's adventures in his travel journal. (I was glad that we were the second family to get Clifford; that way, we weren't trying to "compete" with his previous adventures. Ha!!)

Heavy Heart

When I got up this morning, fixed my coffee, and sat down at my computer, I quickly learned that Devin, the former student I wrote about in my last post, passed away early this morning. I am not exaggerating, nor am I trying to be melodramatic, when I say that I was crushed to hear this news. Everyone who knew Devin or knows and loves his family is heartbroken.

Please keep the family, their loved ones, and BHS (which has suffered the loss of three young lives just this year) in your thoughts and prayers. To say all this is hard to fathom is an immense understatement.

A local paper featured this article today if you are interested in reading.

And then I kind of lost it again.

A day or so after I wrote that last post, I had that "overwhelmed by the world" feeling again when I found out that one of my former students (and oldest son of a former colleague I just adore) was in a motorcycle accident and will be paralyzed from the waist down because of a severed spinal cord. While I know he and his family have a long road ahead of them, he is holding his own, will likely have use of his arms, and is breathing on his own. And what I remember most about Devin is his sense of humor and his strength (both mentally and physically), and I'm sure those will serve him well in the days ahead. Keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers, please.

I think aside from the immensity of the situation in and of itself, what got me the most about all this was how his dad had "tweeted" just a day or so before the accident about how happy he (the dad) was to have all four kids under one roof, that we should hug our kids tight because time goes by so fast.

If you are interested, you can read about Devin's accident and progress here and here.

Anyway...

The weekend for us was a low-key to say the least. Friday night, I was in bed by 9:30. Saturday...well, I don't even remember Saturday. Oh yeah...Darryl and I looked at a house with amazing potential (meaning it is a fixer-upper) in a PRIME location at a reasonable price, but we ultimately decided that we are not fixer-uppers.  But wow, if you put some time and money into that house, you could have something truly phenomenal.

I also baked all day for a cake walk for Amelia's school's carnival that was to be held the next day. I made cream cheese brownies, fudge brownies, and Heath bar cookies...and then the carnival was rained out. Our friends Damian and Rebecca came over to take some of it off our hands, and then we gave some to our neighbors. And maybe we ate some. :-/

(Also...we had contemplated going to the LSU game Saturday night, but it was rainy. So I spent Saturday evening wandering the aisles at JoAnn's Fabrics.)

So the weekend didn't really do a whole lot to lift my spirits.

Then yesterday, I kicked off October by scraping the rear left bumper of the car I was trying to park next to. (I was distracted by a group of guys who randomly decided to walk through the space I was trying to park in. Yes, this is still my fault and I shouldn't have been distracted, but that is what was going on.) I left a note in a Ziploc bag on the person's windshield and have heard nothing so far.

This almost inspires me to go off on a tangent about the cost of honesty (and in this situation, probably literally), because really...I could have just parked elsewhere in the parking lot and no one except me would have been the wiser, but instead, I'll probably be paying to have someone's bumper buffed and touched up. Because leaving the note was THE RIGHT THING TO DO. (Thank goodness, there was no dent.) HOWEVER, if I could just be rewarded through some good karma in the days and weeks ahead...that would be nice. :-)

(Is this blog post even making sense? I haven't even had a full cup of coffee yet, and I'm pretty sure I'm just rambling at this point.)

I think I should probably end here.  I'm crossing my fingers for a good second day of October. :-)