Pot Pie or Bot Boi?

When times are hard, I want comfort food.  Unlike many, I have barely any foods associated with comfort from my childhood.  Maybe only one or two.  My mother made a great potato salad and my father made a cheesecake.  So two.  That’s it.  Unless you count the holiday dish I was inexplicably allowed to make as a young child.  I think it was called scalloped pineapple?  It involved melting a stick of butter, either white bread crumbs or cubes, a can of crushed pineapple, more butter and some sugar.  I had completely forgotten about it until this very moment.  I know, you are asking me right now, “How could you possibly let a thing like that slip your mind?????”

Over the years, I’ve gotten a chance to define the term comfort food for myself.  And that’s not such a bad thing, no?

As the weather got chillier this week, and my anxiety began rising about the election, I found myself drawn to a picture on Chez Pim.  When I clicked on the picture, I learned that I was looking at a bowl of Pennsylvania Dutch Pot Pie, otherwise known as bot boi.  At that moment, I knew it was the perfect comfort food for me this week.  Chicken broth made from scratch, the chicken pulled from the bones, onions, saffron, corn, potatoes, and homemade noodles.  Warm, rich, and overloaded with carbs.

As it turns out, I ran out of time on election day and had to make it the next day.  Also known around these parts as the day elation turned to devastation.  It was pretty much the only the thing I accomplished all day.  And it was good, good for me, and good for me to have to do.  There is something about dough, any dough that needs to be worked a little and rolled out, that is tremendously healing to me.  The smells that filled our little kitchen and emanated through the rest of the house were a reminder that all was not lost.  We have our home, we have each other, and our family is alive and well-fed.  May all families have this much.  You can find the recipe here.  I didn’t, and wouldn’t, change a thing.  It was just right.