beef pot pie

last week we had some delicious chicken pot pies from a little cookbook/magazine jason bought me: Cooking Light's Readers' Top-rated Recipes. we've tried a couple of recipes from it, and they have been wonderful! delicious, using pretty much normal ingredients (martha stewart's recipes, on the other hand,  are GORGEOUS, but they end up being kind of expensive to make, with all the unusual ingredients you have to buy just for that recipe, and sometimes i can't even find them at the grocery store). so, since we're trying to be more budget-conscious, i thought about what i could make with ingredients i already had instead of heading to the store to spend more money. i never make the same thing two weeks in a row (i guess i feel like it's too repetitive... for my family. i don't mind... so maybe i should find out if they do! i'd waste less fresh ingredients that way), and i had run out of chicken, so i thought "how about BEEF pot pie? used the same basic recipe, altered slightly to account for the beef-ness, and to our taste (the first time was a little bitter, and i thought it might have been the parsnips in the original recipe, so i replaced those with a sweeter alternative: carrots. beef pot pies

preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

boil 3 cups reduced-fat beef broth in large dutch oven. 

add vegetables - 1 cup each of 1/2 inch cubes of: potato, sweet potato, celery, carrots, and onion.

cover & simmer for 6 minutes, then add one pound of steak, cut into bite-size pieces. 

cook 5 minutes, then remove meat & vegetables with a slotted spoon. 

mix 2/3 cup flour with 1 1/2 cup milk in a bowl with a whisk. add to broth.

cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently. stir in meat & vegetables.

add 1 1/2 cups frozen green peas, thawed <--a step i forgot both times i made this; 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper.

spoon into ramekins coated with cooking spray. recipe called for 8, but i actually only did 2 in individual ramekins - one each for me & my love - and the rest in a larger (identical) "ramekin"? 

top each with puff pastry dough, and bake for 16 minutes, or until pastry begins to brown.

and it seemed too boring to drink water, so i created a sparkling beverage out of: 

2/3 juice (pineapple orange banana - what joey calls "monana juice") and 1/3 sparkling water. 

garnish with an extra sprig of thyme, and enjoy!

ps. yes, these are the ramekins that i got the whole set of 6 + the large one for $4.50 at an estate sale - aren't they so fun!? makes me want to bake pots de creme, and other individual-sized recipes just so i can use them!