A twist on a Classic and an Eat what you grow update

I am pretty sure that every French-Canadian family has it's own tourtiere recipe (a kind of meat pie, I suppose) that is passed down through the generation.  I imagine that every generation puts a little twist of their own to suit their tastes and their needs.  Although we love the flavour, "someone" in my household is not to keen on the idea of eat pie for dinner.  So, here is my twist on the classic tourtiere...

Saute one chopped onion with about a cup of chopped celery in a tbsp or two of butter until they are soft.  You want the leafy, inside bits for this, not the green outside stems (which suits me just great because for eating raw, I only like the green outside stems).

Add in about 1 pound or thereabouts of ground pork (or whatever ground meat you like to use - I like pork - my mother uses a blend of meats in her tourtiere) and saute until the meat is cooked through.  Add 1/4 cup boiling water, 1 tsp each salt and pepper and dried thyme.  Cook down until the water has pretty much evaporated.  Then add a sprinkle of cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves (don't add these earlier on or the whole thing will become bitter).

Normally, at this point you would refrigerate it until cool and then put it into a pie crust to bake...but we twist it up...

Cut a baguette in half and remove some of the inside "guts" to make room for your filling.

I save these, dry them, and use them as bread crumbs...unless someone sneaks into the kitchen and polishes them off before I can dry them out.

Spoon your filling "generously" into the bread trough.

Side view so you get a better view of the spooned out bread.  I serve this with a salad on the side, or some nice sauteed green beans and mushrooms.  Really any vegetable that you like will work.
It's a quick weeknight meal because the filling doesn't have to cool, and then you don't have to bake the pie.  How awesome is that?  Oh - we cut a baguette into 4 pieces, but the filling is more than enough for that...someone usually takes the rest of it in their lunch the next day.

I realized that it has been a while since I posted about my self-imposed eat what you grow/grow what you eat challenge, mostly because I thought it would be a little boring for my readers to read the same list all through the winter.  I also realized that when we are home (not on holidays or visiting family) we eat something from the garden every day without even trying or thinking about it.  Jams, pickles, salsa, relish, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce made with home-canned tomato juice, dilly beans, etc have kept us in good supply.  The mainstay though, are the herbs.  I put them in almost everything I cook.  Plus we use them for tea.

They were on several different shelves before, but when we were putting the dining room back together after painting (that nice light green in the background) I put them all together so the boys don't have to look for them.  Look at that - I grow 18 food herbs in the back yard (plus that red jar which is dried strawberries that I want to test out in the boys tea - N, I think, will like that). Huh, if I had guessed, I would have said 10 to 12.  Interesting.

So, the jams are almost all used up now, but I have some berries in the freezer to turn into jam when we run out.  We are about halfway through the pickles and tomato juice.  We have hardly touched the hot sauce, but only have about 3 jars of salsa left.  It will be interesting to see what we have left when we get back around to the new garden season.  Some of the herbs I am afraid will run out - specifically the thyme and lemon thyme.  Others, I have aplenty - specifically the mint and lemon balm.  I will update again near the end of winter.

Linking up with: Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia
                         Tutorial Thursday at Marigold's Loft even though I am linking up a day late.
                         What I am eating over at Townsend House a new link up.
                         Simple Meals Friday at Nourishing Traditions  a new to me blog I am excited to have found.