Chicken Pie with 3 Vegetables and Gravy

Chicken Pie Vegetables Gravy British Pie Week

Continuing with British Pie week, combined with posting my dinners online showing me up to be really shoddy about healthy eating and 10/day fruit and vegetables, today’s easy to make lunch was a slice of chicken pie in gravy with three vegetables – cauliflower, broccoli and Chantenay carrots.

This was an under 30 minutes meal again – the pie was a 1/4 of a family pie, the Pukka chicken and gravy pie.  Cooking for one relies on a mixture of ways to try to get enough vegetables without having an overload of fresh veggies that grind you down as they have limited life – so frozen vegetables work out the best option in the majority of instances.  However, you do sometimes get sick of the sight of a bag lurking – and my lurking bag had been the broccoli and cauliflower mix I’d had in the freezer for over 3 months.  The Chantenay carrots were some of a Special Buys event and I’d grabbed them at a good price, 59p for 500grams from memory.

I used the toaster oven to cook the portion of chicken pie, which took just 20 minutes with no pre-heating.  The vegetables were microwave steamed – the frozen broccoli and frozen cauliflower for 5 minutes together, then I added in the Chantenay carrots and microwaved all three together for 5-6 minutes.

Although the carrots don’t look too great – that’s because they were on their last legs – and I’d just rubbed them down on the outside rather than peeling them.  You do not have to peel carrots before cooking them, that’s down to personal preference and I figured they’d be fine as they were, the skins weren’t tough at all, they just looked a little lacking in moisture, but tasted fine.

All I then needed was a splash of Bisto gravy, made with boiling water from the kettle and a teaspoon of gravy granules!

Cooking for one tends to end up with endless food to use up.  I love pies so bought this intending to freeze 1-2 portions, but it was so tasty I’ve kept going at it rather than freezing it!

10 a Day 

This was a winner – as it counts for three portions of the 10 portions a day of veggies/fruit we’re supposed to get.

Menu Cost: 

The pie cost 50p for 1/4, it had been on a special promotion at Asda for £2 for the whole family pie.  The carrots were about 10p worth and the broccoli and cauliflower were about 10p each – total cost was therefore about 80p or so.