Mmmmm, chicken pie

As far as I'm concerned, my wife, Kim, makes the best chicken pie I've ever had.

She follows the K&W style recipe, which basically means she uses peas and carrots, along with some potatoes and perhaps another ingredient or two that I'm not aware of.

It doesn't matter. All I know is that I like it, and when we have guests over, or perhaps when we make a neighborly Welcome Wagon call or a condolence call, others pretty much like it, too. It also usually gets gone fairly quickly at family reunions or covered dish events. I never get leftovers.

Mmmm, good. It's comfort food at its best.

So the other day, Kim wanted to know if we should try the chicken pie meal at Friedberg Moravian Church, put on by that church's Women's Fellowship.

Moravian chicken pies are different from Kim's in that they don't include vegetables. There's mostly shredded white meat chicken (Kim prepares hers with white meat chunks), gravy and with plenty of crust: crust on the top, crust on the sides and crust on the bottom.

I usually refer to chicken pies without vegetables as Moravian chicken pies, even if they were made by Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians. It's just a way for me to distinguish between chicken pies with vegetables and those without.

Anyway, we decided to go to Friedberg on Saturday to pick up a couple of Moravian chicken pie meals to take home. It sounded like a good deal: you could get a wedge of chicken pie, and/or a slice of country ham, green beans and corn, potato salad, slaw, roll, applesauce, choice of dessert and a drink for $10.

We thought we'd get there early – it started at 4 p.m. – to beat the rush, but when we arrived at 4:02, the ginormous parking lot was already packed. Folks were walking through the doors in droves. Uh-oh.

I should have known. This was the 101st anniversary of the Friedberg Women's Fellowship chicken pie meal. They've been offering this dinner since 1918; they should know what they're doing.

And they do. There's a separate line for those who want to eat in the Fellowship Hall; there's a separate line for those who want to purchase a frozen pie, and there's a separate line for takeout.

We got in the takeout line, placed our order and got our meals. It took me longer to decide what I wanted for dessert than it did to get the entree.

When we got home, we settled in and began to eat.

Mmmm. Chicken pie. We were greatly comforted.