2025 has come in hot and living through that discomfort requires community and comfort food can be a loving gesture that supports ourself and others. In this Feed Your Fire episode, we explore how to support someone through a challenging time and how we can propel forward through our own difficult circumstances while we make a fabulous chicken pot pie recipe.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods. We're only a few steps into 2025 and already many of us need a sigh of relief. In today's episode, we're going to find comfort in a meal and talk about ways to propel ourselves forward, even when that feels like a daunting task.
So those that have lost their homes or their loved ones in the California wildfires, our hearts are with you. The magnitude of that type of devastation makes words really fall short, and all that one can do as a witness is hold space for someone's pain, offer a sense of community and show up through acts of service. Those three things are really a universal balm. It may not remedy someone's situation, but it certainly can soothe it.
On New Year's Day, I had attended an intentions retreat with a friend of mine. One of the first exercises that we did was to sort of catalog our 2024, to just take a moment to reflect on the good and bad that had happened. One of the things that I noticed about what I wrote down was that many of the experiences weren't mine. They were someone else's. They weren't things that actually happened to me. They were things that happened around me. Now, of course, the things that happened around me still have an impact on my life and as a loving, compassionate person, I feel for the people that I share life with. But it was very eye opening to see how I was interacting and interpreting these events, and that my empathy didn't require that I absorb these emotions, that I take them on as my own. Instead, I can just bear witness to someone else's journey and support them through it.
It's almost instinctive when we see someone struggling to try to help them carry it. What they often need though is simply to have someone walk beside them to validate their experience and to see them. And what I've learned from my own personal experiences is just how important that validation is and its role in the healing process. Having our pain seen—and in particular, if there's someone responsible for it, for them to acknowledge it is a huge part of being able to move forward into peace.
I was thinking about comfort food and how so much of what we eat affects our mood, and how our mood affects what we eat. And so I wanted to offer something that has warmth.
So today we're making chicken pot pie. It's not something I've had a lot of experience with to be honest. It's always kind of reminded me of like a green bean casserole kind of thing. And yet I was delightfully surprised at the outcome, and so was my son. He said that he loved it, and it might have been the best thing he's ever eaten. And that is high praise.
So a chicken pot pie has essentially three components. The first, maybe the most obvious, is the pie crust on top, right. Inside there's this creamy sauce. Then there are the sauteed vegetables and the chicken. Now you can leverage a lot of store-bought ingredients to make this. As you know, I'm a nerd, and I totally geek out on being able to use the food I make multiple times. So I made quiche, so I have pie crust. I made soup, so I've got chicken and I've got broth, but I want you to feel free to leverage the ingredients at the grocery store that make life easier.
Now, the one thing that you cannot shortcut on is this luscious sauce, and I'm going to walk you through how to make it. Now, the first thing we're going to do is make a mirepoix, and that's a fancy word for sauteed onions, carrots and celery. So go ahead and get a medium sized saucepan, put it over medium heat, throw in a little bit of olive oil, and then add in those veggies and saute. Now, you don't want these to brown, so add in a little bit of salt, if you need to, so that they sweat. Keep your eye on the temperature, lowering it if you need to, once those vegetables are kind of cooked down, I like to amp up the aromatic flavor. I'm going to throw in a little bit of minced shallot and the white parts of a couple green onions that I'm just going to slice up coarsely, I find that adds a bit of dimension to the flavor. I'm also going to add in some fresh thyme and a little bit of chopped dill. Let that cook for about a minute,and then remove everything from that saucepan and set it aside in a bowl.
Now feel free to add in additional vegetables. I'm going to add in some chopped leftover broccoli and some defrosted frozen peas, as well as the green parts of those scallions that we chopped up before. Season that with a little bit of salt and pepper, and just set it aside.
Then we're going to add in our chicken. A rotisserie chicken from the grocery store is a great, easy shortcut. I've got a big pot of soup that I made, and so I'm going to use some of the chicken from that. So add your chicken to the bowl of vegetables and just set it aside.
Then we're going to make a veloute, which is one of the five mother sauces that we learned about in culinary school. So a veloute starts with a roux. So we're going to take a couple tablespoons of butter, melt that down, and then add in a few tablespoons of flour until it reaches the consistency of wet sand, and we're just going to let that cook just a little bit until it takes on a blonde coloring. You'll want to whisk it continuously, and then we're going to add in chicken broth. I'm going to let that come to a simmer, stirring it continuously and letting it thicken up until it will coat the back of a spoon. Turn off the heat. Add in a little bit of cream, salt and pepper, and give it a taste.
Then we're going to add the sauce to that bowl of vegetables that we set aside. Pour it into ramekins, and then take that pie crust that you've rolled out and place it on top of each ramekin and gently pull it over the edges, pinching it down and cutting away any excess. Cut some slits in the top so that air can escape. And then we're going to brush it with an egg wash, bake these babies up for about 35 minutes, and then welcome to heaven.
What I love about this recipe is that it's so ubiquitous. Everyone knows chicken pot pie, even if you've never eaten it. It's something everyone can connect to and relate to. It's such a timeless recipe that's tried and true that it feels like you can rely on it. That's a big part of comfort and moving forward is feeling that sense of safety, whether it comes from external support or you find it within yourself. Without that comfort, we can succumb to fear, which tends to find its way into any space where there's a vacuum. And so really, when we think about what it takes to propel forward in a daunting task, it's really about facing that beast, finding a sense of safety and security and then anchoring into your power.
I'm going to borrow from some of the teachings that I've learned from Al-Anon that have actually helped me get through all types of situations in my life. The first one that really resonates with me is that truth is really the path to a free life, and that living in truth requires facing your fears. The second is about recognizing what you can affect. Impact what is actually within your control. And the third is distinguishing what's in your lane and what's in another's and being honest about your role, your actions, your behaviors and theirs. Not getting caught up in what's happening around us, but instead focusing on what's happening to us and what's happening because of us.
I've also learned that all of life's circumstances, no matter how painful, difficult, unbelievable, or insane they are, they are things that we can overcome. We can be reborn like the Phoenix, being reborn in the face of a scorched path evolving into something bigger and better than before. The discomfort of that process can be offset by the community, acts of service, and love in our lives. I hope this recipe offers you a little bit of warmth on this cold January day. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.