Leftover turkey pie

Looking back at 2013, one thing I did learn was that sometimes you should just trust that things will work out. I spent most of October and November applying for jobs. Interestingly, the first job ad that caught my eye was for a project manager at the University of Cambridge for a project I happened to know from my earlier job. I applied for it, but thought it sounded a bit too good to be true, and that I would have no chance actually getting it. The deadline for applications was also far away. So I kept applying for other jobs, quite a lot of them, and many of them jobs I didn't even really want but I kept thinking they must be better than the one I have. And I spent a lot of my holiday entitlement going to job interviews. I kept getting disappointed when I didn't get the jobs. Finally I got a call, an interview for the job I had first applied for. On top of it all, the interview was on a day I couldn't make it because of previous work commitments. So I emailed whether they would be willing to move the interview, which fortunately they were. 

Long story short, I was offered the job the following working day. The morale of the story: if I had just believed I could get the job I wanted, and knew I was great for (it's not often you tick every box on the job application requirements list) I would have saved myself so much stress, disappointment and wasted holiday days (not to mention money spent in ridiculously expensive parking garages). As Mum always says, you have to believe that life will carry you. I don't know what my future job has in store, or what 2014 has in store for me but maybe I will have a bit more faith that life tends to find it's way, one way or another. I'm not saying things will just sort themselves out if you aren't willing to do something about them, but sometimes you just have to have faith.

So after these deep philosophical thoughts brought on by the New Year, on to more mundane issues. I promise this is the last leftover turkey recipe as I used the last leftover turkey for this pie. Again born out of no other inspiration than whatever food I happened to have lying around after Christmas. I do like to play fridge roulette and see what comes out after combining the random ingredients I can find.

Leftover turkey pie (serves 4-5):
1 shortcrust pastry (I used some left over store brought pastry)
2 cups leftover turkey and sausage meat from the turkey
100 ml crumbled blue cheese
1 tomato
200 ml cream
3 tbsp cottage cheese
1 egg
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sweet paprika 
a pinch of cayenne pepper
50 g grated cheddar

The howto:Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Shred the turkey and roughly chop sausage meat. Line a pie tin with the pastry. Fill with meats and top with the blue cheese. Thinly slice tomato and place on the turkey. Whisk cream, cottage cheese and egg lightly with a fork. Add spices. Pour on the pie. Top with grated cheddar. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the filling is bubbling and pie is golden brown.

The verdict:
The pie turned out really tasty and creamy with a just the right amount of blue cheese to give a subtle flavour but not too overwhelming. The cream and cheese made the slightly dry turkey nicely moist and tasty. Well, adding cream and cheese to anything will make it taste great. This will make a great takeaway lunch for the first painful days back at work. 

The card:
I continued to play with my Wildflower Meadow set, here is a few other cards I made. The first one is using the same colour combination as my previous card, I coloured the stamp with Stampin' Up Old Olive and Melon Mambo and Tim Holtz Distress Worn Lipstick. I then embossed using the Wildflower Meadow embossing folder. The sentiment is from the Chalk Talk stamp set and stamped onto Old Olive cardstock using Old Olive ink. I added a few adhesive gemstones and some organdy ribbon from my stash. I matted the card onto Old Olive cardstock and attached everything on Kraft cardstock.

The second and third card were both stamped onto white Hobbycraft cardstock using Baked Brown Sugar ink and embosse using the embossing folder. For the first of the brown cards I stamped the sentiment from the Chalk Talk set onto Baked Brown Sugar cardstock and fussycut it. I added some brown bakers twine and attached the sentiment using dimensionals. For the second card, I re-stamped the Wildflower Meadow using Strawberry Slush ink and fussycut the flowers and attached using dimensionals. I stamped the sentiment from the Chalk Talk set and attached using dimensionals. I also used some pink ribbon from my stash. Both cards were then matted onto Baked Brown Sugar cardstock and the first one attached to Whisper White and the second onto Sahara Sand card.