Now that's what I call A PIE!

The best part about Winter is that I'm constantly starving which makes me more motivated to cook and when I feel like cooking, food always seems to turn out tastier, even if they're first time experiments!

So last time I saw A, she told me she was going to make a pie- so the mere mention of the word connected with my stomach which insisted to my brain that it needed one...

so the tired ol' muscles decided to cooperate and finally got around to it this weekend =)

I can't believe in the past we actually used to bother rolling the dough, cutting the pastry to fit and making a proper base, sides and top! WHAT A WASTE OF TIME...so I took my friend's advice and just used the sheet and squashed it at the top to make a "dumpling" LOL

The filling was concocted via imagination on the spur of the moment...beef mince, garlic, onions, pepper, red wine, Vegemite (secret ingredient hehe), tomato paste, sugar,salt, cornflour water...When it was done I mixed some frozen peas through it and left it to cool. Prior I had steamed some chopped potatoes and chopped carrots, so I put the steamed carrots on next and then the potato mash which I mixed with some parsley...

Then I baked it for about half an hour...tasted pretty good!!! I rarely get time but I love making pies from scratch- you can be sure it's all good stuff and no nasty surprises- I remember back in high school we dissected a pie from the school canteen for our food tech class and then filtered the contents- once the majority sauce had gone, the leftover "meat" was all gristle... I've never eaten one of those kinds of pies since...actually one of my earliest food memories as a child was finding a maggot in my frozen pie- between these two experiences, the fact I'm still an omnivore is surprising...not to mention the fact I still love my pies! Kids are great-so resilient- I think I'd be more traumatised if I found a maggot in my pie now!

In any case, a good pie is really hard to find...the last really top notch one I had I think was in Fox Glacier, New Zealand-however most things probably taste extra special after a helicopter landing on top of a glacier^^!!!

Rare nice homey weekend this weekend- I managed to finish my shelf which was impressively strong(very pleased-now no excuse for not getting all my crap off the floor!), wrote to some penpals, got some black pants and some silver chains for half price :) (usually I never benefit from sale season so happy about that), watched Grosse Pointe Blank- loved it- the script and soundtrack were really standout!!! 4.5 stars - now I finally understand why pretty well all my girlfriends are John Cusack obsessed- Joan Cusack was really good in this film too- most people call this movie "witty"- I guess that's the kind of humour I enjoy the most!

I'm still really exhausted though and still need a bit more of this dedicated me-time to recharge from the past week- my penpal tells me she is the same in terms of getting emotionally drained via others- she introduced me to a term I'd not heard before- apparently we're called "empaths"!