Chicken Tarragon Pie with butter-free pastry crust

I have never made pastry or pies in my life. But I gave it a go yesterday.

The recipe I found for the pie crust seemed OK, it was 2,3/4 cups of flour, 1/2cup milk, 1/2 cup of oil, spoon of salt. I am pretty sure that is considerably healthier then store bought frozen pastry which is half butter/shortening.

The last couple of times I have bought celery I have chopped off the bottom and the leafy tops and kept them for cooking. They last only a couple of days so I wanted to put them to use in this pie. These celery throw away bits had gone into my sweet potato and chickpea curry last week quite successfully. It uses more of the celery so saves money and the nutrition and flavour in the celery leaves is good.

 The filling was whatever veges I could rustle up, chicken, tarragon, water, cornflour, stock.

 Cooking up the filling

I lined a 6 muffin tray with some pastry and the filling and this is how they turned out. Ugly but yummy.

 The rest of the filling went into ramekins with a bit of pastry and sesame seeds on top. Again ugly but yummy.

It was a miserable day outside so I spent it on the couch with my cat reading for uni and watching TV.I ate chicken pie for late breakfast, lunch and dinner!

The need to disappear and some of my meals

Yes I did a little disappearing act, I do that alot, in real life as well as online. It's not hard for me to see where it all went wrong. My last post was Feb17. I spent the whole of Feb 18 volunteering for my former employer- taking a social group of 85 year olds to the horse races. I thought I would be OK as I wouldn't be involved in the office. I was wrong. I was very very wrong. As the staff involved in the outing, who formerly reported to me, could not help themselves but update me on everything that was happening. Though yes I was very annoyed, it was also a great excuse to go off track with my eating. And that I did. I should not allow the excuse but I decided to eliminate the cause of the excuse. So I called in sick for the next weeks day of volunteering and am devising ways to have no contact whatsoever with my old job.


I have been back on track again for a week. When I am good I am very very good and when I am bad I am positively evil. So unfortunately having a couple of bad days every few weeks is cancelling out alot of the good.


I completely forgot about blogging most of the time. Here are a few shots from the last week.

Steak, potatoes, cheese, beans

Salad roll

Turkey with cranberry, Waldorf (no cheese) and salad 

Now this was good and there is plenty more in my freezer  - I made another batch of sweet potato and chickpea curry with brown rice and  fresh coriander

Waldorf (no cheese) and salad. Sprouted legumes are  good for  some protein in what would otherwise be very low protein meals.

Stir fry beef in hoisin sauce and fresh ginger, veges including the pak choi from my courtyard garden

fresh pineapple

Egg on rye and garden vegetable medley

Oh now this was good I have made it a few times this week. Fried tofu then coated in honey and sesame seeds with salad dressed in lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. TASTE SENSTATION!!