#anyway the point was where would i find a cat that the name parsley would be good for

[loadsofcats]

I’m reading Crime and Punishment. Much thoughts in me

[stories-by-rie]

Chapter 1 - Heart of Silver

Evelyn turns to the infamous curse-broker Ariel for help, after she got cursed by a dead granny’s fork.

words: 3763 || masterlist

Despite the late summer, the air had grown cold with the night’s storm. The wind was blowing the rain drops harshly against Evelyn’s coat and the persistent noise of its dripping onto her hood mixed with the ringing sound in her ears. With the anxiety that threatened to overflow, she shivered. Even if her hood saved her from the worst, she had to hold it in place with one hand so the wind wouldn’t blow it off. Now, that hand was wet, cold and shook even more than the rest of her body. Tripping from one foot to the other did nothing to bring her warmth or to disperse the gnawing threat of doom inside her chest.

    Once again, she pulled out her phone. The fourth of September, 22:34, a Thursday, no new notifications, battery at eleven percent. Raindrops landed on the bright screen and distorted the picture of a flower field in irregular splashes. From the upper right corner, lines like spider legs drew through them. 

    Frustration settled in her, taking coin-sized bites. Her eyes flicked over to the doorbell again -- she had rung two times already -- maybe a third time would be all right? She knew that Ariel was home, so if they hadn’t opened the door after two times, a third ring wouldn't make them either. 

    Still.

    Just as Evelyn was about to press the bell again, the door opened slightly, barely enough for her to make contact with one eye. 

    “Why didn’t you text me that you’d come?” 

    “I did. You haven’t read it yet.”

    Ariel pulled out their old flip phone, dipping their glasses into bright white reflections, and skimmed through what had to be a real handful of messages. 

    “Ah. Oh. Hm.” They stared at a message for a while before they looked up to Evelyn again, opened the door a bit wider. “There will be a sale for winter tyres down in the old factory on the main road next week.”

    Evelyn was too stunned to answer anything but, “Ariel, you don’t drive. You don’t have a car.”

    “That’s true.”

    “It’s summer.”

    “Are you sure?” Ariel looked at the rainy night sky, and squinted their eyes. 

    “Listen, Ariel. I wrote in my message-”

    “Yeah, I read your message. So what?” They looked up at Evelyn again, closed the door a bit more to shelter from the rain. 

    “I didn’t know who else to ask.” Her voice sounded a bit thin to her own ears then, the uncertainty growing with each passing minute. But she had held on for hours now, and it didn’t feel like she had it in herself to hold on for much longer. 

    Ariel scoffed. “Yeah. Obviously, asking anyone but me would be foolish, but I am really busy, you know? A curse is a curse, you should just let it run its course. I am not some sort of all-purpose antidote.”

    Evelyn managed to put her foot in the door before Ariel shut it. 

    “Please? Listen, no one knows curses as well as you do. I am afraid I don’t have that long and I absolutely can’t do this by myself.”

    With both hands against the door, the wind had enough freedom to rob her of her hood, so it drenched her within seconds, stung on her skin like a hundred little needle pricks. 

    “There’s just a handful of curses that more or less kill. You want me to believe that you got one of those? Do you know how hard that is? What would be in it for me?” Ariel eyed her suspiciously. All Evelyn did was to pull up her sleeves as far as possible. Where the skin was thinner and fairer, the black veins stood in sharp contrast to her body, shimmering in a dark grey. Ariel’s eyes widened in surprise and excitement.

    “A Heart of Silver? How far has it spread?” They grabbed her wrist. 

    “It’s in my whole blood-stream,” Evelyn replied and pushed her hair from her temples where her veins were just as black. Ariel looked up with an ‘ah’ on their lips and then let go of her wrist again. 

    “So, I’d get the reaping?”

    “It’s all I could offer.”

    “Say, if we fail and you’ll be a silver statue, can I keep you then? Put you in the corner of my kitchen?”

    “This is not funny, Ariel.” 

    “That’s a yes then. Fine. Come in.” They opened the door enough for Evelyn to step through. Instantly, they were caught in this different world of theirs. She was quite certain that Ariel had put a curse on their own apartment somehow that captured the people who walked in, but so far she did not have evidence to support that theory.

    Books towered against the walls everywhere. There was a pot with an enormous fern right in the middle of the hallway. Not a single lamp was lit, and Evelyn could not shake the feeling that it was to hide the shadows of some ghosts living there as well. Perhaps it was the people the not-yet-proven-curse trapped inside of it.

    “You must tell me everything,” Ariel mumbled while pulling out a few books out of their stacks, seemingly randomly.

    “So, I got an unexpected call from a granny in the morning. She asked me to help with a haunting. I thought I could just handle a simple ghost. You know that I am good with ghosts.” Evelyn tried to follow them, focusing more on not tripping over most likely enchanted vases, gemstones, and one array that hopefully was not used to curse the apartment.

    “I am quite aware, that’s why I don’t like you coming over.”

    Or maybe the array was drawn to specifically keep her out, who knew.

    “So, I drove over in the afternoon. Just one old granny and a ghost. There is a nice magnolia tree in the garden. It’s next to the old school that’s half covered in ivy and the neighbours complain about it all the time because they think it’s weed, although ivy is very useful with old houses for climatic purposes-” Distinctly, she noticed how she started to ramble, her tongue too fast for her mind to catch up on. 

    “Please, for the love of the currently absent blood in your veins, cut yourself short,” Ariel thankfully interrupted and pushed the door to the kitchen open. Evelyn tried very hard to calm herself down with a few measured and calculated breaths, focused on the red lava lamp on the windowsill instead. Multiple candles were lit on the table and next to them slept her black cat whose name Evelyn had never learnt. She only knew her as a beast, my evil gremlin, an annoying menace, YOU!, and the apple of my eye. Currently, the proximity to the candles was once again anxiety inducing.

    Ariel pointed at one of the chairs, so Evelyn sat down and forced herself to keep talking, wiped some of the rain out of her face, along with her sticky bangs that hung in her eyes. 

“The granny didn’t have money to pay, which is fine, you know I like to help where I can, right? And she had this very evil looking set of silverware in her kitchen drawer, so I started to work on it and she kept rambling about how I had a heart of silver -- which was already a bit weird, I guess, since usually it’s a heart of gold, right? -- but at that moment, I thought she was just old and confused because I was working for free, right? Well, until I poked my finger on a fork and that’s when it happened.”

    “Was that the short version?”

    “I left out a lot of detail.”

    The coffee machine beeped and Ariel filled the matching cups. They slid one with big bold yellow letters over to Evelyn that read Best Curse Victim, and kept the one with Best Curse Broker In The Whole Wide World. 

    “Did you custom-make these?” Evelyn asked and Ariel set down the two cups with a grin. They knew that Evelyn preferred tea, but, Tea is for curses and rituals, you can’t make me drink hot water with leaves, they liked to argue. 

    Ariel raised an eyebrow at her quizzically. “I assume the granny then turned out to be a ghost?”

    “She apparently had died over three months ago, yes.”

There was a deep sigh coming from Ariel as they put up their feet onto the table, dangerously close to the candles.

    “And never once while working on silverware and getting praised for your silver heart did you consider the option that perhaps you were getting cursed?”

    “Ghosts get better at hiding themselves each day, Ariel,” Evelyn replied with multiple glances to the shadows. Ariel only offered a weak smile and nodded while they pushed the books into the middle of the table, tapped on it with their sparkly painted fingernails. 

    “I have fourteen books on the Heart of Silver, all very rare collections from back when curse-brokers still thought that this classy beast was curable. I also have read all of these fourteen books.” Ariel took a sip from their coffee and grabbed another pair of glasses that were tucked into a pot of parsley on the windowsill next to the lava lamp. They pushed their former golden glasses up into their soft pink dyed hair. 

Last time they had met, it had been deep purple. They had tried to make her believe once that it was tied to their moods, like those 90s mood rings of which they wore three. “Obviously, I read all the books you can find in this apartment, I wouldn’t keep anything that just took up space.” They opened the right page on the first try and slid the book over to Evelyn. The pages were blank.

    “The pages are blank.”

    “Ah, right. I put a curse on them. No one steals books you can’t read, am I right? Here,” they slid over the glasses to Evelyn, and once she put them on, black letters appeared on the blank pages. Just none she could read.

    “I don’t speak that language, Ariel.”

    “Ah, it’s just encrypted.”

Evelyn sighed deeply and put the glasses down again. She warmed her icy fingers on the coffee cup in front of her, the bitter smell of it made her jittery enough.

    “Please, can you just tell me what you know about it? I am certain that you know your curses, you don’t have to prove anything by showing me book excerpts I can’t read anyway.”

    Ariel smirked openly then, their eyes clearly tracing the black lines on her skin where the liquid silver was running through her veins.

    “The Heart of Silver is a curse that dates back all the way to the sixteenth century. That ultimately makes it a curse of the black night level, because we don’t know its origin anymore, so understanding it has become as good as impossible. Legends say that it was just another love story, though. Why it is a heart of silver and not of gold is equally unclear. Perhaps they didn’t know any better. Then again, a Heart of Gold curse already exists, so. Anyway, the story says that one woman, got  jealous of her maid. The maid, being kind-hearted, was just too lovely to her husband, you see. So when that woman died she cursed her maid on her deathbed and said something along the lines of With your heart made of silver, you still won’t be worth enough to appeal to him. Maybe you could feed his greed by turning into actual silver instead.” They took another sip of coffee, taking out another book from the stack on the table and flipping a page open. “How the curse is passed on is totally unclear as well, although, as you might have noticed, contact with silver seems to be one determinant, as well as someone actually cursing you, also known as a ghost. But why and how? No one knows.”

    “Not even you?” Evelyn asked, feeling punched out. She pulled the new book closer, putting on the glasses again, and there they were. The photos with the evidence that this curse existed. That it was more than just a rumour, a scary story told to teach children not to steal. Proof that her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her; that she had understood the situation of her own doom correctly. 

    A silver statue of a man, the face too realistic to be art, distorted in a scream. His arms were outstretched, all around him scrolls of parchment. 1982, Vienna.

    A silver statue of an old woman, sleeping in her bed. She looked much more peaceful, but her brows were drawn together, giving her discomfort away. 1864, Kuressaare.

    A teenage boy, locked inside a dark room with handcuffs tied to the walls, screams on his silver lips. 2003, Hildesheim.

    Evelyn didn’t need to look at more of them. It just made her picture herself as one more of these photos. A corpulent young woman, the face silver but clearly pleading for her life-

    “Does it hurt? Do you know?”

    “Not sure, sorry. Would it help if you knew?” Ariel looked directly at her then, the soft pink hair glimmering red from the lamp, the candles’ lights dancing on her glasses.

    “Probably not.”

    “Then let’s try to make it so that you don’t have to find out. But just to be clear, I will take notes on the curse’s progress, for scientific purposes.” They pulled a notebook out from under their coffee cup.

    “Sure.”

    Ariel grinned and drummed with their golden painted nails onto the table.

    “Soon I will be the first curse-broker to have dealt with the Heart of Silver. Everyone will know my name. Maybe someone will finally publish my book. My google reviews will skyrocket!”

    “You always say a truly good curse-broker gets only bad reviews. And that book doesn’t get published because you describe for three hundred pages how to create various curses. ”

    “That’s because if you want to deal with curses, you need to understand them from the inside out first. Also, creating curses can be fun, I promise.”

    With a glimpse to the shadows, Evelyn nodded in slight agreement. Unease found its way back to her, like an intrusive thought stuck to her skin. The more she listened to her body, the more she felt like it had changed. She was sure to feel the silver in her veins, believed that her body had gotten heavier – was silver heavier than blood? She was sure that her skin had gotten harder where it ran through her.

    “You still there?” Ariel waved before her eyes, nearly poked her, but Evelyn flinched back before they got to. She finally took a sip of her own coffee. The bitterness made her squirm but at least she was able to still taste it.

“So, if the books are all useless, as you say, then where do we start?”

    “Well, as I said, if you want to deal with curses, you have to know them from the inside out. Only if I know how you got it in the first place, I will have a chance at extracting it and exchanging it for a different one. A curse is a near-living thing, after all. If I just rip it out, it might do more damage than aid. I need to know why you fit in its scheme, how it develops inside of you. So I would say we should start with the ghost who put that curse on you, since that granny might be able to answer those questions, but I assume you hunted the shit out of that ghost, didn’t you?”

    Evelyn froze as she remembered the exchange, the prospect of a new curse. She gave her best not to tremble too much as she asked, “The new curse-”

“I can’t tell you what it will be yet.”

“But how-”

“Okay, I’ll give you the short explanation. Any curse corrupts its host. Your body lets it nest inside of it, and usually you will let the curse run its course until it’s fulfilled or withered and the space will grow back. More or less. If I have to extract the curse, the space will be hollow and harm your body and mind. It leaves room for possessions, diseases and much more. So instead I extract the awful curse and give you a new one that is slightly less awful. But in order to do that, the new curse needs to fill out the same space. I need to understand both curses to the T, so that this procedure works. That’s also why I can’t tell you anything about the new curse yet, because I need to understand the Heart of Silver first. Got it?” 

Evelyn nodded, a little as if in a daze. 

“So, the granny?”

“Gone, yes.” Evelyn sighed deeply. “I didn’t think that she would be of help. I just saw her as a ghost and sent her off.”

    “The mark?”

    “Just the silver veins, they started in the hand with which I touched the fork.”

    “Mn. It looks like it has spread completely since then. That doesn’t need to mean anything, though.” Ariel wrote down notes in a book, the pen’s ink invisible to Evelyn’s eyes.

    “When exactly was this?”

    “Somewhen between five and six, this evening.”

    Ariel wrote down more notes, far more than Evelyn had said, so she could only assume that those were some curse related conclusions. After a few minutes, Ariel had emptied their second cup of coffee. At this point, they looked up again and pressed their lips together.

    “I would like to see the curse medium then. You don’t happen to still have that fork?”

    Evelyn shook her head, “I assume it’s still in the house, though. I saw the police wrapping everything up as well, so we should be alone there.” She forced the rest of her coffee down her throat, ignoring how it upset her stomach just a moment later. Ariel nodded and got up, carrying the two cups over to the sink.

    “Well, then. Let’s get going, shall we?” They nodded towards the door and Evelyn went to follow them. Before Ariel closed the kitchen door, she looked back. “Shouldn’t you blow out your candles? Your cat is so close and-”

    “Oh, I cursed the candles, don’t worry. They don’t burn anything. I feel a little bad for doing it, though. Imagine being a fire and then the only thing you can burn is candle wax. So sad.”

    They reached the door and Evelyn stopped once more in her tracks.

    “Do you really want to leave like that?” she asked and looked down Ariel’s onesie with ghost-print.

    “Oh, right, shoes,” they answered, fetching a pair of run down converse, not bothering to tie the laces. They tucked them in and pointed to the door. “Now?”

    But Evelyn still felt like they had forgotten something important. Something they needed to consider before they left. Maybe it was just her fear of entering that house again where she had gotten cursed in the first place, the fear of not finding what they needed to. The fear that she would so utterly fail in the quest of saving her life, of destroying the curse. It was too close to past memories, perhaps. The image of the old lady dissipating into thin air as she sent her off still lingered in her mind, and she couldn’t help but see herself in that place.

    “Ah, of course,” Ariel mumbled, pulled out a single hair from Evelyn and burnt it in the candle standing next to the door. “My mistake.” They waved to the outside, and finally Evelyn found the strength to walk again.

    “So you did curse your own apartment!”

    “Nonsense, I never said that,” Ariel replied with a grin and the rain poured down on them once more. Like needles, it pricked on her skin. If she turned into a silver statue, she would never feel it again. They ran to her old Corolla, parked so very badly in line.

    “You know, those winter tires are really cheap now. You should get them as long as they are affordable. I bet they will be much pricier once it’s winter.”

    “Gotta make it to winter first,” Evelyn muttered and turned on the motor. The radio gave white noise – a side effect of getting cursed, or maybe just a coincidental break-down.

    “So pessimistic. Really, you’re insufferable.” Ariel started to play snake on their phone. 

The way to the old house was quiet except for the occasional white noise when the radio came to life unasked. The road was mostly deserted at the late hour, some street lights only blinked yellow already. It was not until she turned on the road to leave the small city that Ariel shifted in the front seat.

    “Where were you the whole last year, Evelyn?” Their voice was softer now. The phone tucked inside their pocket. With a quick glance, she could see that they looked outside. Of course, they would ask. Evelyn had known that. Despite this, she still didn’t know what to answer. How to say the words to Ariel that she could hardly think to herself.

    “I just… I was not so well.” A kind euphemism for lying in bed all day, ignoring her calls and living off of pizza and instant noodles.

    “We could have really used you then. There was that Undine in the sink of that favourite restaurant of yours. Took three of us to get her out of there. You could have probably managed her yourself.” A harsh way to say that she had been missed. A nice way to say that Ariel was hurt.

    “I’m sorry.” Lousy words. They would not make up for letting her friends down. Not really.

    “It’s fine, you don’t have to apologize.” She had to, though. She really had to.

    Evelyn pulled into the street, the utmost street of the small-town. One could see the forest behind it from here. At the end of the street stood an old house, next to the old school that was covered in ivy.

    “I just wanted you to know that you’re needed, even if you think you aren’t. Or I don’t know… Ah, you know.” Words were hard for Ariel, too. But Evelyn thought she understood them, and nodded with a slight smile. It had been like that between them from the beginning, somehow.

----

WIP intro || masterlist || next chapter

[stylinsonlibrary]

hey do you have anymore witch fics?

WITCH FIC REC

you’ve got this spell on me (everything you do is magic) by teenagedenigma (2k)

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“There’s my boy,” Louis coos, then stands on slightly raised toes to kiss Harry’s pink lips.

“Missed you,” Harry replies, his voice deep and raspy, as it always is right after he changes into his human form.

Everything You Do Is Magic by headlinecreative (5k)

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(or the one where Harry and Zayn are witches, Liam and Louis are new in town, Niall may or may not be magic, and Harry thinks nothings better than the feeling of magic, till something is)

Always Darkest before the Sunrise (7k)

Salem, Massachusetts, 17th century.

“You have attacked without need and without mercy, you have used arts so dark they are of the Evil One, and for that you cannot be allowed to walk free.”

What?

Harry starts struggling. It’s no use, he’s not even doing it with any sort of rational plan, the whole town at this point stands between him and freedom, but the words leaking from the preacher’s lips are filling him with a bile more sickening than he’s ever known.

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taken by the wind by lightofathousandstars (12k)

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“Well what are you gonna teach me then Houdini?”

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When Louis meets Harry however, he realizes that his magic isn't as strong as he thought. And as he tries to navigate through this magic, and the trials of friendships and lost loves that come along with it, Louis finds that being powerful is more of a plague than he realized. A plague that infects more people than he is comfortable with.

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“Anyway, like I was saying and that you were ignoring, there's this new club near my school and I want you to go with me. Could do you some good, getting out once in awhile.”

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A Practical Magic AU

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"I've got Louis."

He didn't mean it to come out that menacing but the naturally deep lilt of his voice wasn't helping. The female on the other end of the phone gave a hysterical squeal.

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Harry frowned, lip protruding sullenly in mild offence.

"I'm not-I'm not going to hurt him," he argued.

"What do you want?" The woman cried, voice wobbling with emotion.

Harry frowned.

"I want Louis," he answered because wasn't that much already obvious? Maybe Louis' family were just really thick.

Work of Magic by Bekita (34k)

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The Sweetest Incantation by smittenwithlouis (40k)

Harry has been alive for decades, and yet he's never been as confused and dumbfounded. He's a witch, for God's sake. Can't get much weirder than all the magical things he's experienced throughout his lifetime. Never in a million years, however, would he have expected to be mere inches away from a hybrid. Or: Harry is a witch who's still working on developing his powers and Louis is a werecat who falls into his life and turns it upside down.

i never did believe in the ways of magic (though i’ve a feeling it’s time to try) by binarysunsets (55k)

Louis can’t shake the feeling that there’s something in the woods, pressing close and watching him with a heavy gaze. It makes him antsy, fills him with jitters. He wants to run, or scream, but he knows to do so would only put him in danger if there’s actually something out there after all. He’s sure he’s just imagining it, but his heart nevertheless pounds in his throat.

When Louis Tomlinson goes on a songwriting retreat to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada, this isn't how he expects his evening to go.

or the au where Louis is a singer who has been cursed to never make music again and Harry is a reclusive witch of the Canadian mountains who's going to help him break the curse.

domestic monsters by g_uttertrash (series; 8 completed works/1WIP; 234k)

Bewitched by photo41 (series; 2 completed works; 1 WIP; 241k)

[thevintagebluebird]

Unpinned - Super Easy (or not) Chicken Pot Pie

It’s a brand new year, and one in which I intend to eat on a semi-regular basis! Playing a little catch-up, here’s our first COOKED recipe of 2017, Danielle’s Super Easy Chicken Pot Pie.

I’m a little fuzzy on the provenance of this one, since unlike our last recipe, the author doesn’t credit the original recipe person, but since the blog is run by Kristin of Dizzy, Busy & Hungry (ah, there we go - I feel uncomfortable with blog names that are not three words) and the recipe is called DANIELLE’S...I’m just saying. Question your sources. Kristin likes Siamese cats, however, so I trust her completely.

Verdict:

Is the Pintrest photo complete bullshit? - Just that plastic parsley thing at the top

Is it crazy expensive/time consuming/confusing? - This is a difficult question this week, as I did something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and actually decided to tweak this recipe to make it HARDER. Why!? Patience, dear reader. All will be revealed.

Does it taste good? - YES. It does.

Here are my victims for the evening - they are a pair of our official “foodie friends” i.e. friends who actually cook on the regular and make tasty amazing things. They sometimes call us to “come help them eat this food” and then we arrive to a five course gourmet meal. They’re crazy. The lovely Kelsey and James Kent. To give you an idea of how awesome they are, within a few minutes of arriving, Kelsey suddenly cried out in dismay when she realized she’d forgotten her stick-on mustache for the blog photos. My kind of people.

Danielle's Super Easy Chicken Pot Pie    

Prep time  15 mins    Cook time  20 mins    Total time  35 mins   Serves: 6  

Ingredients

½ tablespoon olive oil

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

½ cup chopped onion

½ teaspoon garlic salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

1 (16 ounce) bag frozen mixed vegetables

1 (10.75 ounce) can cream of chicken soup (I used reduced fat)

¾ cup milk

1 cup shredded reduced-fat cheddar cheese, divided

1 box pie crust (2 crusts)

   Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet.

Add chicken, onion, garlic salt, and pepper, and cook until the chicken is done.

Mix in the vegetables, chicken soup, and milk, and cook until heated through.

Spray a 1.5 quart casserole dish with cooking spray, and place the first pie crust along the bottom and up the sides.

Stir ½ cup cheddar cheese into the chicken/vegetable mix, and then pour into the casserole dish.

Sprinkle the top of the chicken mixture with the remaining ¼ cup cheddar cheese, and then arrange the second crust on top.

Cut a slit in the middle of the crust, and place in the oven.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.

Ok, let me explain. So the whole point of Danielle’s recipe is to make a nice big hearty meal that’s as quick and easy as possible. Diced chicken, frozen veggies, bag of shredded cheese, cream of chicken soup, pre-made crust - BAM, dinner. I, however, was overly excited to attend the first Somerville Winter Farmer’s Market of the year (where I WON A TASTY SCONE LOOK THEY TOOK OUR PICTURE WE’RE AT THE BOTTOM LEFT!) and accidentally dropped like $80 on locally raised beef and chicken, organic vegetables, fancy schmancy cheese and some exceptionally delicious perogies. I realized, however, that this week would be much too busy for cooking - what do to with all this food!? Well crap. Use it for the pot pie. Rather than an easy bag of frozen vegetables, we peeled, chopped, and cooked FRESH vegetables; marking the first time ever I have intentionally made a recipe more difficult. This blog is ruining me.

Start by enlisting your house guest for manual labor. Excitedly cut into your carefully chosen local organic onion. Find out that the ENTIRE CENTER IS ROTTEN. Chop around it and use it anyway.

Peel and chop the rest of the vegetables. We used aforementioned goddamn lying onion, a huge parsnip, colorful carrots, and some garlic salt. Should’ve tossed in some frozen peas. Cook it a little bit before the chicken, contrary to what the recipe says (James advised us well that root veggies are gonna need a little extra lovin’ time with the heat).

Use Press N Seal wrap (thanks Grandma!) to cleverly store the remaining half of your giant parsnip for use in your crockpot meal tomorrow. Realize as you are typing this blog that you totally forgot to put it in this morning. God damn it. Further embarrass yourself by struggling to cut the paper for nearly a minute.

Shred your delicious wax-sealed local sharp cheddar which was worth Every. Goddamn. Penny.

Chop your chicken. Not gonna lie, I could taste the difference between the locally raised chicken and a 20lb box of cheap Shaws chicken. It’s pricier, so we used a little less than the recipe calls for, but made up for it by adding extra cheese (totally on purpose I swear).

NEARLY CHOP OFF YOUR FINGER OH GOD.

Move your half-cooked root veggies to your favorite green bowl like a pro! Now you’ll do the chicken and add the veggies back into the pan once it’s cooked.

Today’s Unpinned meal is brought to you by Yellow Tail Sweet Red Roo. A big hit in our house as it’s a) cheap b) tasty c) has my name in it (Rew!). Many thanks to our beloved Devin for first introducing it to us, if my memory serves! Yellow Tail, if you want to send me a free bottle or anything for exposing my seven-ish readers to your excellent wine, feel free.

Now cover your local, organic, fresh vegetables with a can of cream of chicken soup. It does not look appetizing. I am concerned.

This chaos was going on behind us while we cooked - miniature tabletop gaming assembly. Or as I lovingly refer to it: the bane of my existence.

Have your adorable guest sort out the pie crust.

Pour the filling into the pie like a CHAMP, not spilling ANYTHING!!! Note that it looks decidedly more edible at this point. Cheese happened (not pictured) and now all is well in the world.

Double your pie crust because you hate your waistline and pie crust is delicious.

Final touch! Cooking! Again! Be sure to thoughtlessly lick the spatula and realize you’d used it on the raw chicken and now you’re probably doomed to perish from salmonella.

The face of two tired (but hopefully accomplished) cooks.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER!!! Note to self: it’s gonna drip, so put a pan underneath while it bakes to avoid hating yourself during your annual oven cleaning.

The moment of truth.

YUSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Final final verdict: I’m getting hungry just looking at these pictures. This was a total winner. I’d like to try it again, y’know, the way the recipe was written. I bet the frozen veggies are totally fine and save a ton of time, but you gotta work with what you have!