I’ve never had pot pie, so I wanted to know what the fucking frig the fuss was all about.
Turns out there’s not even pot in it.

(Sort of disappointing, but probably for the best, because otherwise how can I feed this to my kid?! I’d have to cook a whole other meal just for him, and it’s so hard to concentrate on following a recipe when you’re out of your mind stoned, you know?)

I was hungry, and I was having one of those days where I’d come face-to-face with a lot of assholes. I wonder where these rat bastards all come from sometimes. It’s like they all appear out of the woodwork at the same time. My patience for their many asshat shenanigans was low, and I wanted dinner fast, to make up for the weirdish day I’d had.

I quickly scanned the recipe to see if we had everything we needed to make this – mostly a yes, so I started chopping and throwing things into the saucepan at random. Sort of like a slightly grumpy version of the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show. It got a bit messy.

My kid wandered into the kitchen, lazily scanning for bananas, when he saw my crazy hurdy-gurdy* Swedish chef attitude, and left again. I think he knew if he hung around I’d put him to work.

I opened a can of beans, and realised they were big-ass butter beans, not cute little navy beans. Fuck. I searched the cupboards or anything else, but all I had was kidney in chili sauce, so I thought screw it, and decided to use them anyway.

I got out the flour – corn flour because that’s what I had – and stirred it in with a rebellious wooden spoon. I was in no mood to ‘whisk’ like the Bad Mannered chefs suggested, because the carrots kept getting stuck inside my whisk. Those mother fucking carrots clung to the whisk like kids clinging to their beds in the morning when the alarm clock goes off. Please mom, just five more minutes….

So I threw the whisk in the sink and drowned their cries out with the White Wine. (it deserves capital letters because it’s WINE for fucks sake.)

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Now what I love about Thug Kitchen/Bad Manners is they don’t judge us. They may verbally abuse us, sure, but they never judge. They just say: ‘No wine for you? Just add 1/2 cup vegetable broth to the pot instead.’ They don’t ask if we are members of Alcoholics Anonymous, if we subscribe to a religion where drinking isn’t permitted, or if we have a partner that’s controlling and not down with us partying. They just let it be. They may be curious but they know our drinking habits are our business.

I added the things that needed adding, and stirred like the hungry mofo that I was. I noticed my kid was laying low in another room, seeing how much screen time he could get away with while I was distracted.

Now the thing that really MADE this pie filling with a capital M, was the lemon juice. Before the lemon went in, the flavour was okay, but after, it was zingy and goooood. You know what I mean? That lemon was transformational. Here check it out:

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Confession time: When it came to the herbs, I added extra parsley, instead of chives. This was pure laziness. I had chives growing in the garden, but it was raining out and I’d have to find my shoes, which my dog had dragged god knows where. Sure, I could’ve taken my socks off and gone out in the rain barefoot like a crazy person, but I wasn’t desperate.

I mean I like chives, but not that much. Not wet feet much. Besides I was mid-flow and didn’t want the pie filling to burn. So I grabbed an extra handful of parsley and hoped for the best.

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Just look at that green. I suspect that if there HAD been pot in this recipe, that this is when it would’ve gone in. But what do I know?

When the pie filling was ready, into the pie dish it went. I decided to make one gigantic pie instead of lots of mini motherfuckers. I hadn’t read the instructions clearly I now realise looking back, because I lined the base of the pie dish with pie crust, then filled it with filling, and then topped it with pie crust. I see now that I didn’t need to fill the base with pie crust first. But hey, like I said I’m a pot pie newby – My experience will be riddled with rookie mistakes.

I couldn’t find the brush I usually baste stuff with, and I was getting hungrier by the minute so I ended up smearing oil on with my fingers like a fucking animal.

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We can pretend that the so-called “pattern” (I use the term loosely af) on the pie is deliberate. It’s definitely not because it’s a store-bought pre-rolled one. *cough cough* (Where’s the rest of that wine?)

I was gonna go all in and find some fancy-pants design on instagram or Pinterest to do the pie top in. Maybe some pretty leaf shapes to line the pie top, or some braided affaire. But I didn’t have time or patience for that shit, so instead the pie top ended up looking like some twisted lid on a creepy jack-in-the-box, where something unexpectedly jumps out scaring the crap out of you. There were cracks in it where the pie filling oozed out, sorta like something that belonged in a horror movie.

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Look, I’m a mom holding down 3 jobs. My son can’t stomach gluten. What do you want from me? I haven’t perfected the art of a gluten-free pie crust from scratch just yet, but send me your recipes if you have any that make one from scratch.

This is how it looked when it was done. The smells from the oven were just what the doctor ordered and by the time we tucked in, all the rat bastards of the day had vanished right out of my head.

So the moral of the story is drink pie, eat wine, and be happy.

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Get your own copy of Thug Kitchen’s Party Grub Cook Book, or even the brand new Bad Manners version of the Party Grub book. These books are hilarious and have page-to-page deliciousness.

* It’s okay, I can say “hurdy-gurdy” because I too am Scandinavian, and we all speak a sorta hurdy-gurdy. We even kind of understand what each other are saying. Mostly. Well, sometimes.
Skål!