When Darin came home I said, “I have to stop cooking on Mondays. Or at least cooking anything complicated. Or anything new. I have the kids all day. I’m a wreck by dinner time.”
“What happened?”
“I made a chicken pot pie. And it’s all going wrong! Look at it!”
He looked in the oven. “It looks fine.”
“But it’s not browning! It says it’s supposed to be golden brown! Something probably went wrong with the dough.”
“Okay, you’re having free-floating anxiety. Just calm down.”
“I forgot the mushrooms! Chicken pot pie is all about the mushrooms and I forgot them.”
“It’ll be okay.”
Later, after eating:
Darin: “You know, with mushrooms this would have been perfect, but this was pretty good. In fact, this is the best thing you’ve made recently.”
Diane began to hit her head against the table. “You can’t say that to someone with free-floating anxiety!”
“Because now you’re wondering what was wrong with all the other meals you’ve made? Everything is fine, hon.”
“I’m only making pasta on Mondays.”
“If that’s what you want to do, that would be fine. But this was great.”
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I used the chicken pot pie recipe from The Best Recipe. And I have to tell you: I am a die-hard follow-the-recipe-exactly kind of girl, and something always goes wrong with these recipes. This time it was the pastry topping. Add the flour and salt to the food processor, it said. Okay.
Add the butter, cover them in flour, pulse so many times, and it should look like such-and-so.
Huh. Mine still looks kinda just like flour.
Add the shortening. Pulse in. You should get something that looks like yellow cornmeal.
Hmmm. Mine kinda looks like flour with a few lumps here and there. Food processor works okay, I’m pretty sure of that.
Add 3 tablespoons of water to the dough. Add one more tablespoon if and only if the dough isn’t hanging together.
Is adding 2 to 3 more tablespoons okay? Because that’s what it’s taking me to get mine to hang tough.
In the end it turned out okay—tasty, but the kids wouldn’t eat it (of course). Darin was quite pleased. The pastry topping was tasty. But man…The Best Recipe never runs smoothly for me.