Veggie Pot Pie with a Whole Wheat Crust

This was a spur of the moment recipe that I threw together. I'm used to seeing pot pies with chicken, but this one is meat free! It's a vegan recipe, but it is not gluten free. The recipe actually came together because I wanted use a bunch of our baby spinach, since I harvested all of it yesterday. Then the family was wanting pot pie and I thought lets put the two together with a bunch of extra veggies. I love pot pies, I typically cook them in the fall/winter because to me they seem like a comfort food. It's been cold and rainy here the past couple of days so a healthy comfort dish was needed. There are so many pot pie recipes out there, so don't let this one hold you back. Every time we make a pot pie, we just throw whatever we have together and make up the recipe as we go. Add, remove, change anything you want from the veggies, herbs, to the crust :) You'll see that this time around I ventured in trying to different types of crusts using olive oil vs. vegan margarine.

Bottom Crust:
This recipe is a slightly modified version of Betty Crocker's Pat-in-Pan recipe. For the original recipe click here. This is always my go to recipe for a bottom pie crust. I love that I don't have to roll out any dough!

1 1/3 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 cup Olive Oil
1/2 tsp of Salt
2 Tbsp Cold Water

Preheat oven to 400F. Mix flour, oil and salt till everything is moistened. Then add water and form into a dough ball. Place in bottom of dish and spread dough out to cover entire 9' glass pie plate. Cook in the oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.
Set aside for 30minutes to cool, as you prepare the filling.

Filling:
1 tbsp Olive Oil
1 clove of Garlic
1 cup diced Broccoli
1 cup diced Cauliflower
1 diced Onion
5 diced Baby Potatoes
1 cup Frozen Mixed Veggies(corn, peas, beans, carrots)
1 bunch of Spinach
1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
2 cups Vegetable Broth
1 cup of Soy Milk (Or whatever milk you prefer)
Dash or two of sea salt and pepper
Any herbs of your liking (We used oregano, rosemary and thyme)

Sautee garlic in olive oil for a minute or two on low heat. Cook all veggies except the frozen mixed vegetables and spinach. Let the veggies cook until the potatoes feel tender then add the frozen veggies and spinach. Once the spinach wilts, sprinkle the whole wheat flour in and mix. Then add the vegetable broth and milk. Stir and cook for 20 more minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes to thicken. Then add to bottom pie shell.

Top Crust:
This recipe is also a modified version, this time it's Betty Crockers Single Pie Crust. It's basically the same as the bottom crust, but instead of oil you use shortening. In our case we used a vegan margarine. Worked out well!

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp of salt
1/3 cup vegan margarine
2-3 tbsp of cold water

Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in vegan margarine with a fork or two knives. Sprinkle with cold water, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened. Gather pastry into a ball. Add extra tbsp of water if the dough seems crumbly.

Then roll out pastry using a floured rolling pin. Place rolled out dough on top of filling and pie plate. Use a fork to seal the edges. Then take a knife and score the top of the dough 2-3 times. This will let steam release as it cooks. Cook the veggie pot pie at 400F for 20-25 minutes till the top crust is golden brown.

Let it cool for 10minutes and then dig in! So delicious!

The bottom olive oil crust was definitely meant to be a bottom crust it held together well, yet was still soft. The top vegan margarine crust was meant to be a top crust, it was flaky, soft and tender. Remember you could always purchase your pie crusts, but homemade is always better! You know what ingredients go in it and lets be honest these two pie crusts are really not that hard to make.

Enjoy!

I'm in blackberry bliss!

We went blackberry picking yesterday morning. We were able to pick about 10lbs in an hour, which I thought was great since we were battling the thorns and prickles for the juicy berries.


Evidence we were battling the prickles..well evidence my guy was battling the prickles and thorns, while I took some pictures. I found this picking spot near a school and community track. I'd seen children and their grandma's picking here last year, so I figured we better get a jump start on the blackberry season.


The bushes behind our house are definitely not getting as much sun as these guys are, since they are basically all green berries still.

Even this patch had a lot of green and red berries, so I think we did hit the start of the season. This means blackberry picking for all of August! And meeting new friends like this lil blue guy...
I'm assuming he is a blue dragonfly. He was so tiny, not even the length of my pinky finger, super friendly though. He just sat there watching me, for awhile and once my guy came near he flew away :(

We were done after about an hour, which was a good thing since the humidity really started getting to us. The air quality was really poor here yesterday and so far this morning due to all the forest fires.


Here is our haul for the morning, found a couple spiders trying to catch a lift home with us. The garden in our backyard welcomed them.


My guy immediately started making blackberry pie crumble to bring to my parents later that evening and I immediately started processing and freezing.



Then I started looking up blackberry recipes, share with me if you know of a great one! :) Does anyone else find it sad that when you use any search engine, type in "Blackberry", and you get no sites, articles or images of the actual food. You just get flooded with cell phones aka blackberry info...ugh :S

Anyways, I have plans for a blackberry cheesecake, a blackberry sauce, and a blackberry chocolate :) As for yesterday we threw some in a fruit salad, made a crumble, and some smoothies. Oh yum! Is it bad that we had raw blackberry pie crumble for breakfast this morning? Nah think not :D

~Maggie

It started with a lemon...

What do you do with a big bag o'lemons? (That just so happen to be 50% off..costing me a dollar!) There are just way to many options out there, but I decided to go with something I've never tried making before.....Lemon-Lime pie tarts!

This recipe is great in so many ways. First off, it's INEXPENSIVE! I find that a lot of raw desserts are too expensive on my budget. Secondly, it was easy to create! This only took me about 15 minutes to make and it would have been faster if I didn't soak the raisins. Thirdly, it's a great summer dessert. It's super refreshing on a hot summer day and not one of those super sweet desserts. Last but not least, I think this pie filling can be used in different dishes. Try it as you would yogurt or pudding, sprinkle with some granola, berries, or nuts.

I should also mention to the mom's reading this entry that my lil one, LOVED these. I was surprised because I thought he might not like the tartness from the lemon and lime, but he smiled and said yummy! The crust does balance the tartness of the filling, plus the addition of sweetener to the filling helps :)

I found this recipe on vegweb.com (I love this site)..here is the link to the original recipe Lemon-Lime Pie. I made a few additions to the recipe, and of course made mine into tarts :) How fun!

Lemon-Lime Pie Tarts (my altered version)

(The Crust)

1 cup sunflower seeds

1/3 cup raisins (soak these for 10minutes prior)

1 tsp Agave
Process the sunflower seeds, raisins and the agave in a food processor. I didn't need to add any water to bind it, I just gave it a few minutes of processing till it was sticky. I pressed about a tbsp of crust mixture into each tart shell.

(The Filling)

3 frozen bananas

1/2 an avocado

2 tbsp coconut oil (liquid form)

1 tsp of Agave

Juice of 1.5 lemon

Juice of 1 lime

Place all the filling ingredients into blender and blend until smooth. Pour a little bit into each tart shell and place in fridge or freezer. Top with some lemon zest or a banana slice.

This makes about 9 tarts, although I did have some filling left over so I could have easily made 10. There wasn't enough crust filling to make a 10th though :( Next time I'm going to add just a little extra of each ingredient to the crust filling.

Now to share these with some friends and family to get some reviews. The reason behind making them into tarts was so I could transport them easily :)

Enjoy!

~Maggie

Happy Birthday To Me!

It's my 28th birthday today and so far it's been pretty great. This morning I was spoiled with presents that totally relate to my love for hiking :) The three things I received were items I'd been looking at for awhile, but never mentioned to my guy. How he knew..I'll never know..i guess he knows me well! I got a camel back, which is a back pack with a bladder you can fill with whatever beverage you would like as you jog or hike. A small 1st aid kit that I thought was a case for my camera that is how small it is. I really wanted one of these since we are hiking with our little guy a lot and you just never know what can happen. I also was given a polar heart rate monitor watch, which is great to keep in me in my target heart rate zone :) All awesome gifts :)

I then went to the spa and used my gift certificate given to me at Christmas for a manicure and pedicure, which was really nice. The best gift though was when I came home and my little guy showed me what he and his daddy had made me...

Maggie's Swirly Tart

You might recognize the ingredients for the crust, which is similar to Ani Phylo's recipe for Lemon Coconut Bars.

(Crust)

1/2 cup of almonds, chopped

3/4 cup of dates
1 vanilla bean

1 tsp sea salt

Zest of 1/2 lemon

Juice of 1/2 lemon (roughly 1 tablespoon of juice)

1/2 cup of dried shredded coconut

In your food processor, chop the almonds and coconut into small pieces. Then put the remaining ingredients in the food processor and blend until it starts creating a dough ball. Press in the base of your pie plate or pan.

(1st & 2nd layer)

3 Kiwis

1-2 Mangoes

The 1st layer is kiwis which you may want to blot the base of them on a cloth before placing them on the crust. This way it helps prevent the crust from going soggy. We didn't have a problem with the crust getting to soft or wet. The 2nd layer is mangoes, be creative and decorate.

(3rd layer)

3 fresh peaches or 1 can of peaches, rinsed (if out of season)

1/4 cup of dates

Blend the peaches and dates in a blender till smooth. Pour the puree over top of the mango layer.

(Fruit Toppings)

6-10 strawberries

2-3 mandarins

Decorate the top layer of your tart any way you like. Get creative and have some fun with it.

Well I'm off to enjoy the rest of my day! Hope you try out my Swirly Tart because it's so delicious! The fresh fruit with the sweet crust and puree is a great spring/summer dessert.

Enjoy!

~Maggie