Most readers of this blog know that I have a very diverse group of eaters that visit me pretty regularly. When I learned the other night that a friend who was joining us for dinner was a vegetarian, my thoughts of a lovely roasted pork tenderloin stuffed with all sorts of goodies faded away. He swore that he would be fine with salad and a side dish but that didn't sit well with me.... back to the drawing board! I have owned
Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! cookbook for a while now and even though her recipes are delicious (and relatively easy) I don't think that I have ever actually taken more than a glance at the whole book (sadly this happens to a lot of my cookbooks). The last page in the book has a menu for a fireside dinner.... while we do have a fire place it is decorative (and probably hasn't been used in about 50 years!) but this menu gave me some wonderful inspiration!
My ideal dinner for company is a flexitarian one - where I can customize for meat eaters and veggies without having the stress of two separate dishes. This means that no one gets left out and stuck eating salad and no one has to feel "cheated" by leaving out the meat (though there are many hearty veggie friendly ideas out there). Chicken Pot Pies actually were very east to "flex".... with a few changes to the traditional gravy that is used in the pie (I substituted a creamy sauce for gravy) all I needed to do was to add the chicken to the mix after serving up my veggie friends. This dinner is perfect for the fireside or just a delicious dinner that is easy to freeze and can easily be made in bulk so that you have a left over pie for later. I recommend preparing the roasted chickens and pie crust in advance (ie the night before) unless you have a few hours to spend on this meal.
