Chronicles of a Woman in Training: I cooked with meat! And modified a recipe to be vegetarian! Yay!

Summer is over. Yep, I'm going back to work and I don't want to end my culinary adventures from the summer! I decided I'd make some freezer meals and I also bought a freezer so I can freeze meals to easily reheat on those days that I have meetings that go late - which are endless!

There is a great cooking message board over on thenest.com, and freezer meals are a common thread topic. I found this recipe from a great blog and decided I'd make it - with a twist!

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't eat meat. And I never will. But I've been wanting to cook more with it for my husband's sake, though he never complains. This seemed like a great start because it had veggies in it too. But not only he was going to get the yummy benefits!! I decided to alter the recipe and make a vegetarian version too.

I followed the recipe exactly for the chicken version, except I didn't use mushrooms. I used zucchini instead, along with a bag of frozen peas/carrots/green beans/corn. Next time I'd use even more veggies. The hot sauce was a must. I used sriacha sauce, just a bit, and it gave great flavor. I also used herb salt from Adventures in Spice, a great local spice company, to cook the veggies in.

The first thing I did was cook the veggies according to Annie's recipe. I used a little more since I was making more pies and wanting more veggies for my version.

The zucchini and peppers are from my garden!

I cooked the sauce according to her recipe too, for the chicken version. For the veggie version, I used veggie stock instead of chicken stock in a separate pot. I also halved the recipe because I was going to make more chicken pies, some to give to a pregnant colleague who is on bed rest.

Then I separated the veggies and added chicken to half, poured the chicken sauce over it, and then the veggie sauce over the veggies alone.

Then I poured them into containers I marked with being veggie or chicken.

Then I made the crust - I made the same amount that Annie recommends, even though I knew I'd have more pies. It ended up working out fine too.

I rolled out the dough and cut circles based on the size of my containers. I didn't make it curl over the edges like in Annie's recipe because I have tops to put on my containers for the freezer and I didn't want to have to mess with the dough spilling over.