Above is my Make Do with what you have Chicken Pot Pie.
Use left over chicken, veggies of any kind, or you can Make Do with canned veggies, we prefer garden peas, corn, carrots, heat the chicken and veggies, stir in a can of Campbell Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom soup. Remove 2 frozen deep dish pie crusts, pour the hot stuff in the bottom, turn the other frozen crust upside down and seal the edges by pinching. wait about 5 minutes, and peel the pan off and poke with a fork, 350 for 20 minutes. YUM
I wanted to tell you about the pie and it Set My Mad Mind off on a tangent of Make Do from my life.
I was dirt poor from the day I was born, and it continued until maybe 20 years ago.. My mother Made DO with what she had, she stretched every thing.
Left over stew, in a pan and put biscuits on top, and another meal was born. (canned for us, she could not make biscuits.)
Dog food was stale white bread, with powdered milk on top and water.. Bread was 5 for a dollar. We could not have real milk, thus the powdered milk.
Rice for every meal but breakfast, Rice under beans, cooked with chicken or pork in it, Rice with tomato gravy, rice with any kind of gravy and rice pudding.
I learned to make do, and when my kids were little, I would use a pill bottle to cut the center out of canned biscuits, (5 cans for a dollar) and fry the centers and the biscuits, roll in powders sugar, or sugar, or brown sugar to make donuts.
Also from those biscuits i made cinnamon buns for breakfast on Sunday, put them in a round pie pan, sprinkle with cinnamon, ice with powder sugar icing and serve.
Bob says his mother did the same but no rice, she used mashed potatoes the way mama used rice.
Stretch the food was the whole point
MAKE DO is an idiom. Grammatically, it is a verb phrase, and it means to use what one has on hand OR to persevere through non-ideal circumstances. We were never hungry, butt weight was a problem.
23 comments:
You did what you had to do, and learned well from your Mom. The pot pie looks GOOD, I love pot pie!
Good for you!! ❤️
that looks fabulous!!!
Hari OM
OH yes, we were a make-do family too - my mother never lost her thriftiness, even when times were no longer lean... YAM xx
Some day I will have to blog about how my mother made "cookies" for dessert when money was tight. Now your pot pies would be delicious!!!
Yummmm, the pot pie sounds good and easy too. My dad was a thrifty make do kind of guy.
Hello,
Your Pot Pie looks delicious! At times, I think we do what we have to do to get by. Take care, enjoy your day!
Thanks for sharing this post of how your mom “made do” Sandra and my mother was much the same. Growing up we never had frozen foods or prepackaged ones. There were lots of veggies from her garden and homemade pasta. It’s probably why to this day, I try to make use of foods in the fridge and not waste. Our parents grew up in tough times and it was passed down wisely. The chicken pot pie looks so good.
We were just talking about making pot pies!! Looks delicious...:)jp
Oh m'gosh ... I am SO making this! And just in time for cool weather!
You've sure reawakened memories of times when Troy was a baby -- certainly no days of wine and roses. His dad brought home but $65/week so ya, most of our meals were rice and cream-of-whatever soup. Always kept an extra milk carton on hand so the 'whole' could be mixed 1/2 and 1/2 with powdered. At the time I don't even recall feeling deprived.
Gosh Sandra - I didn't have that - and I feel I am missing something so sweet. I love that story and I am going to get some biscuits today! Probably not good for a diet tho. I loved your story and how you made that pot pie.
I made Roger a beef pot pie from scratch one time...it tasted good, but he did not enjoy it. He said every time he looked and saw my crust, he wanted one of my cherry pies. It was not the taste, but a mental thing with him. But I wonder if I put it in something other than a pie pan if he would eat one.
We ate what we grew for the most part. I can of Campbell's vegetable soup on a day mom had to go to town was a real treat! She bought her meal and flour, and a bit of beef but mostly we lived on pork, chicken, some fish, and squirrels and rabbits. We raised four hogs every year to butcher...could not have chickens cause my brother was allergic to feathers.
IHave always loved chicken pie since the first one I ever had here in Canada. Poor was part of post war all over so we all made do, sausage meat eas used a lot and Hot Dogs or wieners. Canned peas and corn too but only after we had immigrated. But there was another make do 7I did not like. My mom would add bits of fabric and add wear to my dresses and add knitted parts to sweaters. She also made stuff from hand me downs she could get. Y age 14 I was gifted an electric sewing machine and learned fast hoe to make all kinds of family clothes. Store. Bought items were shoes and winter coats until the late 1850’s when my Dad allowed me to have a store bought dress. I even got a watch. My mom was upset as she saw that as a waste of household money. By 1962 all changed as dad died and mom had insurance money. She got a TV and spent most eves drinking and smoking away time and numbing her pain. I was left making do.Created meals like Spagetti and Hot Dogs with potato salad. I even got the groceries. I baked cakes when my mom was out of it.
But life got better in 70’s as I worked and hubby too. Now we look back and wonder at how we did all as much is bought now.
I have not had mac and cheese in years and today I shall with real cheddar and apple cake home baked too. So blessed.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Chicken pie will be store bought next time I order take out.
The pot pie looks great and I'm glad you told use how to make it. I've always had enough to live on, but some bad decisions, the last recession, which hit my husband's construction business hard, left us in some financial trouble and I had to learn how to make do. I never minded, but was glad when things picked up again. What I would have liked the least about making do for long periods is the insecurity of it all.
And today I feel so bad for all the people who are suffering, who try to make do, who may not succeed at it, who may be without electric and water because they can't pay their bills, or homeless. On and on, I better stop.
"Sometimes you have to make do" was Mama's favorite saying. Drove Big M
crazy.....fast forward to a to 2 years ago Hurricane season and lots of power outages in her hometown. Big M said ...we are making do.
Hugs Cecilia
Making due when things are tough is a God given talent.
I wasn't as poor as you but I know now..looking back...how resourceful my parents were with what they had.
I always thought our food was wonderful.
Mom could set a beautiful table with good china and beans and franks would be a feast.
When I was about 9 or 10 I belonged to a church group called Guild Girls.
Often we would take turns and go to someone's house for the meeting which always had "snacks".
When it was my turn we had what I thought was like the Queens tea.
My Daddy got a loaf of Wonder Bread..you know..the squishy white kind.
He buttered each piece and on some he sprinkled granulated sugar, others were cinnamon and sugar and some had crushed peppermint sprinkled on top. He also cut the slices in different shapes and put them on a fancy plate. I thought it was the most special dessert ever.
I know now it was because they couldn't afford anything else..But it stands out in my memory as a very special time and especially because my Daddy did it for me.
Sue
It's amazing the things you can make/create when you have to "Make-Do"! Sometimes I think I need to Make Do more often, regardless of what I may have now.
persevere through non-ideal circumstances - that was the life philosophy then and now; sprinkled with lots of love, good neighbors and extended family.
I can taste the pie from here.
I also grew up in a somewhat poor family, but we never lacked for delicious food. Mom made sure of that. It was not fancy, but she had a way of making it tasty.
Looks like I'm not the only one who loved this post! My mom would cook oatmeal for breakfast and the leftover would later be fried. And even when I was raising a family we ate a lot of rice and noodle dishes. They filled everybody up. And both of my grandmas made donuts. One made cake donuts and the other made raised donuts. Boy this post brought back memories!!
One more thing: looking back, yes we were poor by today's standard I guess. But all of our farming neighbors (and most of the townspeople) were in the same boat and none of us felt sorry for ourselves, felt like victims, or expected money from the government. That was reserved for people who couldn't help themselves. It was such a different mindset back then. People knew the 10 Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and tried to live that way. People helped their neighbors, whereas today people often don't even know their neighbors. People went to church, helped others through their church, but now many despise the church.
That's really interesting and your pie looks delicious! I remember my Mom making do when fixing our meals and nothing was wasted. With her it was dealing with food rationing during WWII and several years later. She was frugal her whole life and without realizing how it was affecting my own way of thinking, to this day I make do and hate waste and stretch things out. The older I get the more of those old teachings come through.
Yeah we learned from our parents and are the last of a dying breed I'm afraid because young people today don't seem to understand that concept. - Your Pot Pie looks delicious.
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