Meat Pie, Eh

Our household is not big on sports. We pretty much only turn on some sport if its one Our teams (i.e. Butler Basketball, Colts Football, occaisionally Pacers, etc.) -- or if it is The Olympics. When it comes to rooting for Our team, what can be better than rooting for your entire country?
In 2008, we decided to spend the evening of the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony with our friends the Julius family. On the spur of the moment, we decided to get carry-out Chinese for dinner, and then later baked some frozen egg rolls as we watched the ceremony. Yes, for those who haven't made the connection, we ate Chinese Food while watching the Beijing ceremony. Little did we know then, but we had invented a new family tradition.

Fast forward to 2010, and we began discussing with the Juliuses spending the evening of the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics together. Even though the children outnumber the adults in our combined families, we decided we would give it a shot. But what of our new tradition? It had been easy enough to grab Chinese take-out -- but there aren't a lot of options for drive-thru French Canadian cuisine in Indiana.

So, my wife wrote to some friends of ours who live in British Columbia not too far from Vancouver, and asked what traditional Canadian dishes they would recommend. We got back a pretty lengthy list. My wife, of course, was most interested in the dessert-type items, especially those involving chocolate. I was most intrigued by two dishes: Poutine and Tourtiere (pronounced Tore-Tyair). She Ok'd the Poutine based on the description (and I will give a more thorough description and review after we attempt that dish), but she was doubtful about the tourtiere. So we opted to try it out for ourselves, before potentially condemning our friends to something. So tonight was experiment night.


Tourtiere is a French Canadian meat pie. We followed this recipe, using a Kroger-brand generic boxed 9-inch double pie crust. And it was tasty. If you are a vegetarian, or have vegetarian leanings, then this one is definitely not for you. But if you are carnivorous, you'll enjoy this dish. Even my wife, who was initially dubious, became very interested when she smelled it coming out of the oven, and was pleased with the taste. I think this one will definitely make the cut for opening ceremony night.