Everyone wants to have everything. That is expected. The problem is the expectation that it can be achieved by putting in 40 hours a week. Elon Musk said something to this effect on an interview regarding his drive to develop rockets to space. I am putting in 36-48 hours per week at work and I am not even close to achieving a tenth of that magnitude. Between my job, household work, band mom duties, I find that I am always playing “catch-up” with everything else. I go on a marathon phone call with my Mom who I haven’t spoken to for almost two weeks (sorry!!!). I double up on my time at the elliptical to make up for the days I missed (and for the extra cupcake, extra cup of rice, second glass of sangria…you get the picture).

Today, I am catching up with the TV shows I missed. I will start with Blacklist. I love this show but it airs the same time as Thursday Night Football. Next is Big Bang Theory, which airs the same time as Monday Night Football. Football will always take priority, so I always DVR these shows in the hope that I will find time to catch up. Today is that day. I am marking it by making a special treat/comfort food—-tres leches cake!

The first time I had tres leches  cake was when I first moved to Houston and my childhood friend, Rhea Robinson, made it. I absolutely loved it.  I tried so many recipes that didn’t quite turn out right, until I found Martha Stewart’s. In the quest of finding the best recipes, all roads lead to Martha Stewart. She cleverly uses a basic French sponge cake. The beauty of this recipe is that it doesn’t use butter. That is a big deal because as the name implies, the three kinds of milk should be pretty much all you need (and more) for your caloric requirement.

Preheat oven at 325, then spray 9×13 pan with butter.

Gather up your ingredients.

That’s all! See why I love this recipe? For today, I add 1/4 cup of espresso coffee for flavor.  I am binge-watching so I need all the caffeine I can get.

Many versions add whipped cream and fruits on top. I sometimes do that because it looks a lot prettier. But I don’t have fresh fruits today. So i’m settling for coffee…which works just as well.

Last week, I read an article on PopSugar about Chrissy Teigen’s chicken pot pie soup recipe belonging to Soup Hall of Fame. As i read the recipe, it validated one of Internet’s solid truths—anyone can post anything online and and call it the best of whatever. It’s just up to you to believe it.

I’ve been making chicken pot pie and its soup version since forever. I’ve done it often enough that i have innovated the crap out of it. Any method that can create the exact same thing at half the time is what innovation dreams are made of. As good as Chrissy’s recipe is, I doubt that such method will take less than 20 minutes. MINE CAN! Not to mention that mine, like most of my favorite dishes, use only one pot…

This is my cast of characters:

Preheat toaster oven. Yep, just your trusty little toaster. Set at 400.

Per pie crust box instruction, add 2 tablespoons of cold water to half the package, form into ball. You don’t need a food processor for this, just your own God-given two hands. I have tried frozen pie crust, it is not as flaky. This pie-crust box is the closest thing to that of my right-from-scratch recipe.

You can be OC about this and form it into squares, but trust me, it doesn’t make a difference. I put a foil on top of the pan then sprayed it with butter. This saves a lot of time when doing clean-up. I cannot tell you enough how much I hate scrubbing grease stains from my pans.

While this bakes, put the butter in the pan then start mincing the chicken breast then cut up one potato into cubes. When butter is hot add the onion-celery mix.

Cook for about 2 minutes, high heat.

Most recipes will use another pan to make a roux (cooked flour), to thicken the soup. Here’s a universal truth: any stock that is added to flour cooked in butter  WILL THICKEN. It doesn’t matter if celery and onions are in the mix, that baby will come out thick and hearty.

All this time, keep it on high heat.

As soon as it comes to a boil, turn down to medium heat then cover the pot for 10 minutes.

Just as the soup is wrapping up….take a peek at the pie crust.

This is one hearty comfort food that you can make in a flash. And because I am not married to John Legend, PopSugar will never publish my version and crown it as a Soup Hall of Famer….haha. Bitterness aside, I actually like Chrissy Teigen. I find her funny and pretty. If I didn’t have a gazillion unread cookbooks already, I would buy one of hers too.

Anyway…this is what  we’ll have for dinner. D will enjoy my commentaries about the article  and will probably offer to sing “All of Me” to  make me laugh,  to which I will have to politely decline. We’ve had enough of rain.