Cooking with Love by Robin Ruhlman
Did you ever have a person in your life that cooked for you and when you ate the meal you could feel the warmth and love all the way to your soul? I have been so fortunate to have a long list of people in my life that are on this list. I have memories of Sunday lunch with my Memaw and can still taste the mashed potatoes with a heavy hand of black pepper and her creamed lima beans. No family meal was complete without homemade noodles from my beloved Grandma Donna. As our families grew, she would boast with amazement at how many eggs were in the batch this time. My mother raised our family with warm and delicious meals every night while working a full-time job.
In our family, the cooking wasn’t just for the women. My heart fills thinking about Grandpa standing in his backyard, frying fish and fries for hours, and all were welcome. We would grab and eat as fast as he could pull them from the fryer. In our house, my Dad still holds the title of “best bacon fryer” and that’s coming from three bacon-loving Ruhlman boys.
Our neighbors have become our family. We even refer to each other as our cul-de-sac family. All of us congregating together, raising our kids together and regularly sharing a meal together that we call “driveway dinner.” The kids all beg for driveway dinner, sometimes it is pizza delivery, and sometimes it is potluck.
We celebrate birthdays, holidays, and special occasions around a table of food. When our friends have babies, we feed them. When someone loses a loved one, we feed them. It’s how I was raised, and it’s what brings me joy.
I recently took over the role of Kitchen Coordinator at 2BC and was intimidated at the thought of cooking for the church family that I love so much. Would I be able to fulfill it to the standard that everyone expected? Would I be able to cook for that many people? Would I be able to recruit volunteers to help me? Would I have time to balance this job and my son that isn’t in school yet? Since walking through the doors for the first time in 2014 for a MOPS meeting, this has been a place of respite for me. A true break from my life as a busy wife and mother. I wasn’t sure that I wanted it also to be my job. The doubts and questions of “Is she qualified?” were circling in my head.
Then I realized this was an opportunity for me to safely return to “work” while doing something that I love — for people I love. I now have my first Church Conference meal behind me. There was food to serve, volunteers, who are also friends, helping me, friends encouraging me, members hugging me with compliments, and lots of clean plates.
I took a moment during the conference and stood at the back of the room, watching everyone eat and soaking in the fellowship and love that was in that room. Those people were sharing a meal, a chat, and I had a part in that. It instantly took me back to my Memaw’s round table for our after-church lunches. The smell of pot pie was lingering in the room yesterday, and once again my heart and soul were full.
*I got lots of compliments on the pot pie, so I thought I would share the recipe.
Robin’s Church Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients
6 cups cooked chicken (rotisserie chicken is what I used)
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese
2 cans peas and carrots (15oz cans) drained
1 can green beans drained
1 can diced potatoes drained
2 cans cream of chicken soup
16oz sour cream
½ onion, diced
1 TBSP Rubbed Sage
2 refrigerated pie crust
Preheat oven to 400* Spray two 9x13 pans with non-stick spray. Mix filling ingredients together and divide between the two pans. Roll out pie crust and cut into strips. Arrange strips on top of the pot pie. Bake for 50 minutes or until pie is bubbly and crust is crisp.
**To make this Gluten-Free – find a GF cream of chicken soup and use GF pie crust. I prefer the Glutino pie crust mix. It requires very few ingredients and rolled out well after being refrigerated.