I'm having Elevensees right now: leftover chicken pot pie from Tuesday night. I'm about half-way through my piece. It's late. It's dark. And I just thought, whilst staring admiringly at my pie, "Wow. I made this." As I told my dinner group, this is the first time I've made pie crust unsupervised. And it turned out quite well. The crust has mellowed a bit during it's stay in the fridge. In its prime, it was crisp and flakey.
My exact position right now is rather remarkable. I'm seated on a wooden chair, in my warm house, typing on a portable computer under the light of both incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Most of the pie resides inside me, now -- only a rind of crust remains. Yum. All gone. That pie was made of flour, water, shortening, peas, carrots, lima beans, green beans, boneless, skinless chicken, salt, pepper, oil, cream of potato soup and cream of cow. The water came through pipes right into my kitchen. The vegetables came frozen, in a plastic bag. I've never grown lima beans... and without instruction would not be able to grow them. Yet I can eat them. I've also never grown wheat or green beans, nor have I ever harvested salt or pepper. I'm not sure how I would go about harvesting salt. I imagine a shovel would help. Cream of potato soup comes from cans -- aluminum cans (They're no longer tin, right? Who cares anyway?). I wonder how many hours I'd need devote for the cream of cow I used...
But back to meatier matters. Boneless, skinless, chicken breast! Of all God's children, how lucky am I? I've never raised a chicken. I've never killed or plucked a chicken. I've never skinned a chicken, or removed it from its bones. And yet I eat boneless, skinless, chicken breast? In colloquial parlance, I can claim that the pie was "made from scratch." But really, I have no clue how to make that pie from scratch. Imagine the hours I'd need to dedicate just to get one part of the pie. Pick any part! Oil? Flour? Pepper? Aluminum? The oven?
I live like a king. And so, likely, do you.
Here's my castle:
