Continuing with British Pie week, combined with posting my dinners online showing me up to be really shoddy about healthy eating and 10/day fruit and vegetables, today’s easy to make lunch was a slice of chicken pie in gravy with three vegetables – cauliflower, broccoli and Chantenay carrots.
This was an under 30 minutes meal again – the pie was a 1/4 of a family pie, the Pukka chicken and gravy pie. Cooking for one relies on a mixture of ways to try to get enough vegetables without having an overload of fresh veggies that grind you down as they have limited life – so frozen vegetables work out the best option in the majority of instances. However, you do sometimes get sick of the sight of a bag lurking – and my lurking bag had been the broccoli and cauliflower mix I’d had in the freezer for over 3 months. The Chantenay carrots were some of a Special Buys event and I’d grabbed them at a good price, 59p for 500grams from memory.
I used the toaster oven to cook the portion of chicken pie, which took just 20 minutes with no pre-heating. The vegetables were microwave steamed – the frozen broccoli and frozen cauliflower for 5 minutes together, then I added in the Chantenay carrots and microwaved all three together for 5-6 minutes.
Although the carrots don’t look too great – that’s because they were on their last legs – and I’d just rubbed them down on the outside rather than peeling them. You do not have to peel carrots before cooking them, that’s down to personal preference and I figured they’d be fine as they were, the skins weren’t tough at all, they just looked a little lacking in moisture, but tasted fine.
All I then needed was a splash of Bisto gravy, made with boiling water from the kettle and a teaspoon of gravy granules!
Cooking for one tends to end up with endless food to use up. I love pies so bought this intending to freeze 1-2 portions, but it was so tasty I’ve kept going at it rather than freezing it!
10 a Day
This was a winner – as it counts for three portions of the 10 portions a day of veggies/fruit we’re supposed to get.
Menu Cost:
The pie cost 50p for 1/4, it had been on a special promotion at Asda for £2 for the whole family pie. The carrots were about 10p worth and the broccoli and cauliflower were about 10p each – total cost was therefore about 80p or so.