Snow Day!

So remember when I said it started snowing Sunday afternoon? Well it hasn't stopped since, which means we've shoveled our driveway a bazillion times and we have a backyard that looks like this:

After rolling out of bed this morning I checked the web and discovered that school was closed as was my place of employment. Woo-hoo! Snow day! Serious snow day. In fact I'm not sure where we're going to put all of the snow that is rapidly (re)filling our driveway. The kids went out to play this morning and I briefly considered attaching some kind of lead to the younger one in case he went under. Between no school, unlimited snow play and discovering Netflix can stream SpongeBob cartoons the boys are pretty much in heaven. My idea of heaven on a snow day? Baking, of course! I thought it might be a good afternoon to try out Julekake, a recipe that caught D's eye in his quest for a Christmas morning breakfast treat. More on that in another post.

Another great thing about having a snow day is that you can have Sunday dinner leftovers for lunch. I made the most scrumptious Skillet Chicken Pot Pie last night. It's from The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook (page 40) which I picked up for half price on Boxing Day last year. I love this cookbook, which is brought to you by Cook's Illustrated. I also love Cook's Illustrated, although they are one of the few recipe sites on the web that require you to pay for access. Which I totally understand since a revenue model of 'let's give away everything we do for free' isn't all that sustainable. So I'm not going to reproduce the recipe here. I'll show it to you though:


This Chicken Pot Pie is such a great concept. It's made in one pan (apart from the biscuits, which are baked separately) and uses convenience products like boneless chicken breasts and frozen peas/carrots. The sauce is butter, flour, chicken broth and cream. You can likely note specks of thyme in the sauce as well, along with some chopped onion and celery. This is seriously good stuff. I'm glad I took a picture of this dish in the kitchen because by the time I got to the dining table with my portion, the plate beside me looked like this:

Happily there was more than enough for seconds. D. actually made the biscuits for this dish since I was working on a new Christmas cookie recipe, the details of which I will share later. I even caught him in biscuit-making action:

Why yes, that is a 'vintage' Tupperware pastry rolling mat. I stole it from my mom and she either hasn't noticed or is too polite to say anything.