Mushroom Pot Pie

I have previously shared my recipe for "Never-Fail Pastry," and I'm afraid I have discovered the limitations of this recipe: it only succeeds when you actually follow it. Finding myself short on flour, I decided to halve the recipe, and proceeded to add half of all the ingredients...except the water. I added all the water. I am such a geek-dork.

Anyway, I soldiered on, because people needed to eat, right, and actually it turned out okay. I took my soggy pastry and patted up up the sides of my mini ramekins, and then I put them in the oven at 350 for ten minutes or so, to pre-cook and hopefully dry them out. Then I filled them with a vegan mushroom filling. 

The mushroom filling was from a recipe called "Vegan Mushroom Pot Pie with Sweet Potato Crust," and you know what? I screwed that up too! But again, no sweat. All I actually screwed up was omitting the beans because I thought I had beans, but I had no beans. It would have been better with beans, but again, people just needed to eat.

So the imperfect mushroom filling went in the imperfect pastry, and I topped them with not sweet potato but red potato slices, which never quite cooked enough, but whatever because...you guessed it...people just needed to eat.

Somehow, against all odds, it all turned out pretty well. Cooking is often pretty forgiving, lucky for me and the backup dancers who just need to eat, and even when I'm screwing up a recipe, at least I'm keeping my eye on the goal of eating less meat as a personal action against climate change.

Post-script: Leftover mushroom filling makes a decent pasta sauce! I topped it with avocado.