Getting Ready for War, aka Problems & Pasties

This afternoon I put together Haley's rope bed and tightened the rope net. I figure this way we'll both have tight beds for West/An Tir War next month. (A tight rope bed = a comfy rope bed. That's where the rhyme "Night, night, sleep tight" comes from!). I also took the opportunity to dump out some straw from both of our mattresses. I really need to be able to fit the mattresses, beds, tent, and tent poles in the trailer. Alas, my mattresses have decided to defy physics. I dumped out a *lot* of straw -- it looks like the straw would fill the trailer on its own. And yet, the stuff *still* doesn't fit!!!

 
Then I made a batch of pasties from my leftover chicken stew. It was an experiment, because normally I use premade pie crust dough that I roll out. However, this time I tried using puff pastry dough. It's definitely more expensive -- I get 4 pasties per box of dough, while I would get 6 from a package of pie crust. However, it's tons easier. I let the sheets thaw and then cut each sheet into 2 big squares and 2 little rectangles. I kind of squash the big square into my smallest glass bowl, and then dump a ladle of soup on top of it. Then I lay the little rectangle on top of the stew, and tuck in the corners. Next I flip the corners of the big square into the middle, over all of it and kind of pinch things together. Lastly, I flip the bowl over and dump the pastie onto my hand, and then gently nestle it onto a baking sheet. EASY. The trick is to get the dough thawed just right. Too frozen and it breaks when I try to mould it into the bowl. Too warm, and the dough gets stick and sticks to the bowl. Anyhow, it's enough faster & easier that if these are even close to as good as my regular pasties, I'll be making a bunch of them for West/An Tir war :)