Individual Veggie Pot Pies

Happy New Year, food lovers! I hope everyone had a great holiday. It's time to start 2015 off with some new recipes.

Holidays are great, but they usually mean LOTS of heavy food. After all the meat, carbs, and sweets, your body needs some serious nutrition. Small portions + veggies fits that bill.

Notes: This recipe can act as a pantry staple if you either (a) make your own pie crust from scratch or (b) keep pre-made crusts on hand. I should have just made the dough from scratch, but I bought some refrigerated pie crusts before we left town for Christmas.

I love Fordhook lima beans and I can always find them in my freezer section, so I added those to my pies. Feel free to swap these out for something else if you're not a fan of limas.

If you don't have ramekins, you can just make a regular-sized pie in a 9-inch pie dish. My ramekins are medium-sized, so this recipe made 4 pies. If you have smaller ramekins, it will make 6.

You'll note that the crust on these pot pies are rather small. That's because I made the mistake of trimming the crust rather than folding it. The crust will shrink when it bakes, so be sure to keep it slightly larger than the ramekins. Lesson learned!

Ingredients:
1/3 cup (about 5 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1 can low sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon dried Italian herb blend (or just parsley)
1/2 bag of mixed frozen vegetables
1/2 bag of frozen lima beans
1 box of refrigerated pie crusts (I used Pillsbury)
Salt
Pepper

Directions: Heat oven to 375.

Melt butter in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Whisk in the flour until a smooth paste forms. Whisk in chicken broth and then whisk in milk. Season with salt, pepper, and herb blend. Allow the mixture to thicken.

Once the mixture thickens, add in frozen veggies. Make sure everything heats through. Turn off heat and set aside while you prep the ramekins.

Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Unroll the pie crusts on a floured surface and roll them out just a little with a rolling pin. Flip over one of the ramekins onto the pie crust. Using a pairing knife, cut out a circle of pie crust that's about an inch wider than the lip of the ramekin. Repeat with the other crust until you have one circle of dough for each ramekin. You can smoosh (technical term) together and roll out the scraps if you need more circles.

Divide the vegetable mixture equally among the ramekins. Put the dough circles on top of each ramekin and pinch the dough around the edge to "seal" the pie. Bake for 30 minutes until the crusts are golden brown. Let stand 5 minutes, serve, and enjoy!