Tag Archives: Ina’s Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons

One of those days

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It’s been quite the week for wildlife. I had two Harris Hawks hanging out on the fence yesterday. Here’s one of them.

Yesterday, after my two-hour zoom call, doing household chores, writing and all the other stuff, I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for Ina’s Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons that I wrote about Wednesday. I loved the recipe from Monday’s cooking class I attended.

I made a grocery list that was quite extensive. There were a lot of ingredients in the recipe that I never buy, like fennel and leeks. It took a bit of time to hunt everything down, plus get the things we ordinarily use. Plus I needed bird seed for my Bird Buddy AI feeder and for the quail.

Of course, all the lines were jam packed. I didn’t feel like self checkout so I waited and waited. Once I got everything out of the cart, I reached for my wallet.

My wallet wasn’t in my purse!

Then it dawned on my that I left my wallet in my swim bag the day before. I had gone lap swimming at the YMCA. The grocery clerk asked me to put everything back in my cart and go to the manager. I thought she’d at least check me out and they could hold onto my groceries until I came back with my wallet. But no, I was going to get to stand in line again plus schlep the groceries around again.

I called my husband. I called three times and he didn’t answer. I had talked to him moments before. But he was probably on the phone for work. I wanted him to meet me at the grocery store with his wallet.

The grocery store is 15 minutes away and for some unknown reason the street, of course, had a ton of traffic. Once I got to the main road to make a left-hand turn to go two miles to our street, a police car with a siren stopped in front of our turn lane and blocked us. I noticed the writing on his car. Funeral. He was blocking the road for a funeral procession. The deceased must have been famous or well-liked. Yes, there were a ton of cars.

Eventually, after driving back and forth for one hour, shopping, un-shopping and waiting to pay for groceries, I got everything home.

I was planning on prepping for the delicious soup when I called my partner for the HOA newsletter to confirm our meeting was in a week from Friday, not the next day.

“No, it has to be tomorrow,” she said. “I’m leaving town Saturday.” I was afraid of that. That’s why a little voice in my head made me call.

So much for cooking. I had to sit down and write newsletter copy. Hunt for photos, write captions and get ready for today’s meeting.

Then I got to cook. But I was exhausted!

Chicken Pot Pie Soup and and Puff Pastry Croutons

When was the last time you had “one of those days” and what happened
that made it so?

What’s cooking?

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Instructor Jan D’Artri helped us by cutting up the White Chocolate English Toffee I made with my neighbor during a cooking class at Sweet Basil Culinary Center.

Are you a spur of the moment person?

I’m not. I plan out my weeks and I like to follow a schedule. I make to do lists and enjoy crossing off items with a red pen.

My neighbor texted me and invited me to an Ina Garten cooking class. She said her friend couldn’t make it and would I like to take her place. I hesitated. It wasn’t on my schedule. It wasn’t on my list.

Then I said yes.

I had to look up who Ina Garten was. She had a show on the Food Network called the Barefoot Contessa. I watched her show occasionally, but I didn’t know her real name.

It was a hands on cooking class called Cooking Ina Garten Favorites (no she wasn’t there in person). Then we got to pick what we wanted to prepare out of the following recipes:

Spinach & Artichoke Dip with Garlic Bread
Truffled Mac & Cheese
Crispy Chicken Parmesan with English Roasted Potatoes
Ina’s Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons
White Chocolate English Toffee
Beatty’s Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
Paloma Cocktail

FYI, you can google any of these recipes and they show up from Ina Garten.

Crispy Chicken Parmesan with English Roasted Potatoes. Delicious.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons. This was my favorite and I’ll try it at home. Here’s a LINK to Ina’s recipe.

One of my neighbor’s friends making the Paloma cocktails.

A photo of the cooking area. We were assigned to stations with our ingredients, pots and pans, burners, ovens and recipes.

My neighbor and I chose White Chocolate English Toffee because it looked super easy. However, we couldn’t get our white chocolate morsels to melt. The instructor added vegetable oil and whipped it into shape. Here’s a LINK to Ina Garten’s recipe.

When we were done cooking, we sat down to a delicious meal. Everything was so good!

Sweet Basil’s is also a kitchen store with all sorts of fun gadgets, beautiful dishes, serving platters, knives and everything under the sun for cooking.

Have you tried any of Ina Garten’s recipes before? If so what ones?

From my list of recipes from the cooking class, which would you most likely want to prepare and eat?

Are you a spur of the moment person or a planner?