To understand Mia LeTendre's style of cooking, you need to know a little about her first. She’s been vegan for 17 years, a lifestyle decision she made after giving birth to her son. Before that and from age 13 onward, she was a vegetarian, and cooking was done out of necessity. When she started cooking vegan, she was “horrible at it in the beginning,” she remembers. But watching her parents and learning about timing, making adjustments and “trusting intuition” helped her get the hang of it. Now, feeding her teenage son, she reflects, “Cooking for my family is the most sacred thing I can do for them.” 

The pot pie came from that part of the brain that nostalgia calls home. Memories of childhood convenience foods (think Marie Callender’s) brought to life the idea of single-serve decadence. Over time, the pie has been sharpened and refined, and it comes together easily in the hands of its creator. It’s “not only a comfort food, but as a single mom, [it allows her to] waste as little as possible,” she says. The filling also takes a slightly different form depending on the season – greens and squash in the summer, root vegetables in winter. She generally freezes much of what comes up in her garden, and when fall comes, she’ll make “a bunch of pot pies and put them in the freezer” to pull out when they want something decadent and, yes, meaningful.