On Staying Rooted + Chicken Pot Pie

Musings on the difference between settling and being settled

I’ve written, more and more frequently, about the idea that the universe is constantly sending transmissions down to Earth, beaming inspiration, just waiting for someone, anyone, to pick them up, to use them. Once you become attuned to this idea, it’s hard not to see it as truth. I’m astounded at the places and things from which I’ve drawn inspiration lately — ranging from books to podcasts to shirts I pull from my dresser, bleary-eyed and pre-dawn. These transmission often appear as threads between ideas I’m already thinking about — and writing about.

A block of text which started “They tell us: Don’t ‘settle.’ Never settle,” popped up on my radar the other day and I immediately wondered if someone was responding to my own essay on the topic of settling. While it wasn’t a repudiation of my own musings, the excerpt was interesting in the author, Jamie Varon¹, made the distinction between settling and being settled. The former is something you should never do, but the latter, becoming settled, is something that we should all attempt to do.

The distinction is one I never consciously thought about until the universe dropped it in front of me.

Around this time last year, I was writing a lot about the idea of enlightenment. How one needs to come to terms with oneself before one can come to terms with one’s place in the universe. I’ve also, in conversations with others about my thoughts on how to have a successful relationship, talked about how in marriage, you need to build a foundation. You need to be grounded in who you are as an individual, who you are as a couple, and, eventually, who you are as parents. If you try to skip a step, it can lead to strife further down the line.

In other words, in life, you need to be settled. With health, with your creative output, don’t settle, never settle — but in life, do get settled². Find comfort in who you are, in the actions you take, the foods you eat, the way you interact with others. If you don’t have an anchor, you’ll find yourself adrift in the currents of life — which can be fun every so often, but, remember: no one can drift forever.

Pulling a shirt over my head the other morning, getting ready to work out, I noticed the print on the front breast. It was a shirt from Protekt³ and underneath the logo had the words “Stay Rooted.”

A good reminder and another transmission.

“Staying rooted,” “getting settled,” “being grounded⁴,” “building a foundation” — however you want to refer to it, this is something I am constantly striving to do. When you’re grounded, rooted, or settled, it makes it easier to deal with uncertainty, with stress. As a parent, this is especially important. You can better absorb the ups and downs of life: the 4am nightmares that wake up Kiddo, and subsequently, you; the unexpected ailments that call for trips to the doctor, the hospital; even the unexpected news of another hand joining the ranch⁵. When you plant your roots deep⁶, it has far-reaching and positive impacts across your entire life⁷. Once you realize this, you can start to make a shift in the way you approach the world.

One of these shifts might be to eat radically. With shifting seasons comes a shifting diet. Gone are the fast and breezy meals of the summer; Autumn calls for heartier fare. It’s the start of root vegetable season — another transmission. This week, we’ll make use of those late season carrots, the sweet potatoes, the onions and garlic.

Yes, folks, it’s pot pie season in New England.

Let’s make it happen.

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In a large cast iron pan, sauté a colony of mushrooms in butter until they are well browned and all their moisture evaporated⁸. You can add more butter as needed. When the mushrooms are crisp, add kale or another leafy green, cooking until wilted. Set aside.

Dust several chicken thighs in salt, pepper, and flour and cook in butter or duck fat on the stove top until browned on both sides. Combine the thighs with the roasted vegetables in the oven as described below. In the same pan, add diced garlic, rosemary, and a big knob of butter, cooking until the garlic is fragrant, and then add in a few spoonfuls of flour, stirring frequently until the flour turns a deep brown. Add a cup or two of broth⁹ and cook until reduced. Add this to the chicken and vegetables.

While the chicken is cooking, roughly chop some in-season vegetables and shower with salt, pepper, and olive oil. We used winter squash, sweet potato, carrots, and onions. Roast these in the oven at around 425(F) until charring, then combine with the mushrooms, green, and chicken per above along with the pan gravy.

Either make your own pie crust or use a store bought one. Bake at 425(F) for about 10 minutes until golden, then add on top of the pot pie filling, and cook for 10-15 more minutes until warmed throughout.

Serve in bowls with the crust and filling.

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There you are, chicken pot pie. This is a terrific recipe for dreary days and stick season. If you’re feeling up for it, it’s also exceptionally easy to prepare most of the components ahead of time and combine just before you’re ready to eat. Roast the veggies, cook the chicken, make the pan gravy. Then you can just top with the crust and reheat on a weeknight.

With that, I’ll leave you to your Fridays. It’s spooky season, as Tia CWD will be quick to remind you — so maybe go get some pumpkins and stock up on candy. Might be the prudent thing to do, as today is Friday the 13th, after all.

1. Jamie Varon is “an author, branding expert, course creator, and graphic designer living in Calabasas, California.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but her book, from which that piece originates, is called Radically Content — which is another sneaky transmission, with me having written about eating radically a few weeks ago.

Here’s the excerpt in full:

They tell us: Don't "settle." Never settle. Keep grinding. Never give up. If you're settling, you're failing. But, we became so obsessed with never settling that we forgot to get settled. To calm down. To know when good enough is enough. To know when it's time to be content and satisfied. And that doesn't mean you won't want more or that you won't grow or that you won't challenge yourself ever again. But it's okay to just... live in your life. To know you are not a perpetual problem in need of fixing. To enjoy your blessings. To look around at what you've built and feel... satisfied. It may not be perfect. It may not be exactly what you thought it would be. But it's yours. And that means a lot more than you think. It's got your signature all over it. Enjoying that isn't settling. It's letting yourself settle in.

2. It seems counterintuitive, but, in order not to settle, you need to be settled.

3. Protekt makes great sunscreen and some nice supplements — I especially like their liquid “Energy,” which often helps wake me up for my workouts before the sunrises.

4. Grounding, the physical process of being connected to the ground, to the earth, through conductive electric fields, by the way, is a burgeoning trend in the wellness space — one in which I’m all in on. It’s why I was preaching to walk around barefoot all summer — it grounds you to the earth. Doing so has been shown to reduce pain, reduce inflammation, and even speed wound healing. Pretty wild stuff. Here’s a study describing the effect.

5. This, by the way, is my way of letting you all know that we’re adding a third cowpoke to the Family CWD.

6. “Planting roots” is an evocative phrase. It also connotes the idea of making a home in one place — giving up the nomadic, the transient, the itinerant. When you root yourself in a place, that’s how you build community, how you get to know your neighbors.

7. In another transmission from the universe, as I was just wrapping up the first draft of this post, Cousin CWD sent me a newsletter post from James Clear, describing why Clear believes “many people have a hard time making decisions.” His analysis?

[Most people] don’t know what is important.

When you have a clear mission and you are completely sure what is important to you, most decisions become easy. Once you’re fully committed, you don’t need rules for how to spend your time. It’s obvious which decision to make. It’s clear what to prioritize.

In other words — they aren’t settled, aren’t rooted. They don’t know where they stand in relation to the world, so they can’t make any decisions with conviction.

(James Clear, by the way, describes his own newsletter as “the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web. As long as we’re good not counting footnotes towards my word count, I’d like a word with Mr. Clear. CWD is nothing if not pithy, nothing if not perceptive.)

8. This is the secret to good mushrooms. My personal opinion is that very few folks take the requisite amount of time to properly brown their mushrooms.

9. Chicken or bone, or vegetable.