Homemade chicken pot pie (but not the crust)

A few weeks ago, a made the wonderful decision to make chicken pot pie at home.
Unfortunately, I also made the terrible decision to double the recipe and make TWO chicken pot pies.
(see exhibit A on the right).

We ended up eating chicken pot pies for every meal for over a week, that I think it's safe to conclude that we won't be eating chicken pot pies anytime in the near future.

The ingredients inside the pot pie are typical ingredients that I usually always have around the house:  chicken, carrots, potatoes, celery and onions.
The stuff I had to buy especially for this dish was the half&half  and the pie crusts. 
(When it comes to me and pies, i ALWAYS buy the pie crust.  I am no good when it comes to making dough, and I really don't think that the time and effort that goes into making pie crusts is worth.  When does someone ever eat a pie and say "this crust is spectacular.  Much better than store bought" ?  Exactly.


Making the actual filling is very easy.  And the entire pot pie is not hard at all, just kind of time consuming since you have to make the filling on the stove, then bake the entire thing in the oven.  I typical prefer cooking meals that requires only 1 heat source (the stove only, or the oven only).  But hey, its chicken pot pie, so.... gotta make some exceptions  :).

Here are the filling ingredients:
    1 cup potato, diced
    1 cup onion, diced
    1 cup celery, diced
    1 cup carrot, diced
    1/3 cup melted butter
    1/2 cup all-purpose flour
    2 cups chicken broth
    1 cup half-and-half
    salt and pepper
    3 chicken breasts.  cubed

In a skillet, with a little bit of oil, cook the chicken breasts until fully cooked.  Remove the chicken then in the same pan, saute the onion, celery, carrots and potatoes in the butter for 10 minutes. Add the flour to the skillet, stirring well, to cook out the raw flour.  Add the broth and half&half to the mixture and cook until bubbly.  Stir in the salt and pepper and chicken and stir well.

Here is the fun part!
In your handy dandy baking dish (pyrex), add 1 pie crust then pour in the chicken mixture. Then lay the 2nd crust on top and make sure that you make the edges of the pie crust stick together and look pretty! Cut slits in the crust to allow steam to escape, then place the pie into your 400 degree oven.  Bake for 40-50 minutes or until pastry is golden brown and the filling is bubbly.