Soul food for Solstice Weather

This morning, while the kettle was heating, I opened the freezer and started taking out things that had been in there too long, rooting through bags of hot peppers from a couple harvests ago, scooting aside diced chicken breasts that had been put up, and taking the measure of the containers of ice cream (the vanilla is half-full; black raspberry is two-thirds). I collected the salmon filets with the cod, placing them next to the half-pound of shrimp together on the shelf in the door. The small beef roast had a nick in its wrapping, and clearly was unusable now. Bad luck, I thought as I pitched it into the trashbin. 

I poured the tea into the pot and was hit with a craving for chicken pot pie. I blame the weather as much as the season. It's been nothing but grey and rainy to go along with the cold. You can't know precisely how short the days are, because the sun never properly comes out, and hasn't in over a week. We had a couple days where the temperatures jumped to near-spring, the mercury in the thermometer loitering around unseasonable highs until late afternoon, boosting any germs in the air, then plummeting again like a train car being thrown off a cliff. 

I opened the cupboard by the stove and fetched out the Pi plate and did a mental inventory of what all is on hand. Diced chicken breast, certainly; I had just seen it. Vegetables that needed using were overflowing in the salad box in the fridge, including celery and carrot, and I had an onion in the storage drawer, so all was good there. Milk delivery was happening this afternoon, and there was flour in the tin, and plenty of butter. The container with fresh herbs still had a very nice-looking bundle of thyme, and the stalks of rosemary were begging for use. Chicken pot pie it is, then, I thought, and took my tea to the Library to log in to work. 

Soul food for solstice weather.