Amy's Vegetable Pot Pie

Today for lunch I brought one of my favorite pre-made storebought vegan items, and that's the Non-Dairy Vegetable Pot Pie from Amy's Kitchen. You're probably already familiar with all of their products, but just in case you're not, everything that they make is vegetarian, and there are several items that are even vegan. Their packaging is awesome because they always tell you right there in huge letters right at the beginning of the ingredients list if something is VEGAN. That makes life so simple. I've been meaning to try bringing one of these for lunch for a while now because I figured that I could probably fit one into the lunchbox and luckily, I was right.

The Vegetable Pot Pie is just what you'd expect. Just like a Chicken Pot Pie, but without the chicken. If you look for this at the store, make sure you get the one that says NON-DAIRY, because I'm pretty sure that there is a second product that is very similar except it's just vegetarian, which I guess means that there's milk or cream in it. These things are delicious. I eat them at home all the time. The only drawback to them is the same drawback with all frozen pot pies, and that's the loooooooong cooking time required to reheat them. This one takes 25 minutes @ 400 degrees uncovered and then another 20 minutes covered with aluminum foil. I didn't discover until the thing was already in the oven yesterday evening that I didn't have any aluminum foil. CURSES! So I started thinking about it, I figured that the first 25 minutes uncovered were to cook the crust and get it all brown and then the second 20-25 minutes (covered) were probably just to finish thawing out and heating up the insides of the pie. So, I figured that I could take it out of the oven after the first 25 minutes and then just let it cool and pack it in the lunchbox. I figured the inside will finish thawing completely before I eat lunch, and then I could just heat the whole thing up in the microwave. I didn't know for sure if my bright idea would work or not, but I heated this up and enjoyed it just a little while ago and I am happy to report that it worked perfectly. So remember that if you ever take one of these for lunch. Just do the first half of the cooking in the oven at home and skip the second half. Then just heat it up for a couple of minutes in the microwave at lunchtime and it will come out perfect. I was actually a little shocked at how crispy the top crust still was, even after microwaving. It was just the way that I like it.

To go along with the Vegetable Pot Pie, I've got some Edamame and some Cherry Tomatoes. Again, I guess these are really the Grape Tomatoes, or whatever they're called, since they're more grape shaped than round. I don't know. I just like calling them Cherry Tomatoes.

And for dessert I threw in a Cashew Cookie Larabar. I thought about leaving the Larabar out, since the Pot Pie has 360 calories, but even with the Larabar (and at least it's just raw fruit & nuts), this is still probably better than I used to eat, even as a vegan. But since I knew I was going to be eating quite a few calories for lunch today, I made sure that I was very good at breakfast and, instead of eating another Larabar, I just ate a Grapefruit. So I saved a few calories there. The Pot Pie and veggies filled me up, so I may just save this Larabar until around 2PM or so and eat it then for a snack to help distribute my calories a little more evenly throughout the day.

So that does it for Thursday's lunch. It was super easy to fix since I let Amy's Kitchen help me. I always like to keep several of their products in the freezer for times like yesterday, when I don't have a lot of time to try and cook something. In fact, I just discovered several more products of theirs that I didn't even know were vegan (like the Tamale Pie) that I will have to try very soon. I think I saw it at the grocery store when I was there yesterday but I just assumed that it probably wasn't vegan, but according to their website it is. Yipee! Seems like eating vegan just gets easier & easier all the time.

Thanks for checking in today and I'll see everybody on Friday!