Guess I'm Kreative AND Craptacular!

Thanks to Eat, Bitch & Whine for awarding me a Kreative Blogger Award! It was very nice of her, since it's obvious from the last post that I'm thinking I suck.

Now it's my turn to name my Kreative Blogger awarded buddies, and share the wealth!

So here's the rules:
(1) Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
(2) Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
(3) Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
(4) Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
(5) Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
(6) Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
(7) Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Here are my awesome Kreativ Bloggers! You guys make me smile, laugh and sometimes cry!

1. evil chef mom

2. parenting by dummies

3. Phoo-d

4. the world according to me

5. bad mommy moments

6. Inktopia

7 .family of foodies

Seven fast facts about me:

1. My high school nickname was Pyro. (don't ask)
2. I secretly wish I could be rid of Skipper the guppy, but he will not die.
3. My comfort food is pho (Vietnamese noodle soup).
4. My first job was pumping gas at my dad's service station.
5. My right eyelid twitches all the time and it makes me barmy.
6. I have a fondness for Australian expressions like barmy, tosser and dag.
7. I am an enabler.

Have a great day, everyone. I'm off to learn to shoot a camera.

Hey, Mrs. Craptacular!

Yeah, you. The chick who knows nothing about computers OR photography and blogs anyway?

Guilty.

And I'm grateful that the blogosphere has some generous, kind souls in it. 'Cause that shot of the French Toast? And the Tabbouleh? Kinda sorta not really very good. It's okay to say it, I know. And that blurry tabbouleh was the best outta 20, honest. In the World Ain't Fair Department: My dad has this pesky genetic condition that gives him the tremors. As in, can barely write legibly. And I have it, too. All of my photographs look like I'm shooting IN a moving car in the rain.

I don't really know what to do. I would have my hubby take the snaps, but he took the sucky French Toast pic and thought it was just fine. I guess he has other things to worry about like, oh, saving lives. Dude *is* sorta busy.

My awesome fellow blogger Phoo-D recommended a tripod, which I am looking into. And I'm taking a "Hey, Photography for a Dumbass!" crash course tonight for 2 hours, but really, how much can 2 hours do? Especially if your hands twitch like a hummingbird with Parkinson's.

But I am hoping you'll stick with me--if only for the laughs--and know that I'm trying to learn this stuff. And since I'm always willing to be the butt of my own joke, occasionally I'll post a "Shitty Photo of the Week," just for your amusement. Who said learning has to be serious?

Shitfire, I think I owe the Bad Word Jar 5 bucks after this post.

Cooking Together: Creme Brulee French Toast

After a week of failures, my fragile ego needed a success story. Flipping through my Gourmet cookbook, I spied what I thought spelled a victory. Creme Brulee French Toast. Sugar+Butter+Eggs+Fatty Milk+Bread=Delicious, right?

Plus, this recipe was so easy that Miss D. almost could have made the whole thing herself.

And it sits overnight in the refrigerator, so all you have to do in the morning is open your bleary eyes and pop it in the oven. Genius!

Creme Brulee French Toast
from The Gourmet Cookbook
serves 6

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 (8-to-9-inch) round country style loaf
5 large eggs
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon Grand Marnier or other orange-flavored liqueur (optional)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Melt butter with brown sugar and corn syrup in a small heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring until smooth. Pour into a 13-by-9-inch baking dish. Cut six 1-inch-thick slices from the center portion of bread (reserve ends for another use) and trim off crusts.

Arrange bread in one layer in baking dish, squeezing slices slightly to fit.

Whisk together eggs, half and half, vanilla, Grand Marnier (if using) and salt in a bowl until well combined and pour evenly over bread. Refrigerate, covered, for at least 8 hours.

Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat oven to 350. Bring soaked bread to room temperature.

Bake until toast is puffed and edges are pale golden, 35 to 40 minutes.

With a spatula, transfer French toast to plates, turning syrup side up.

****************

Of course, it was hella good. A stick of butter, a cup of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of half and half? You could marinate a turd in that and it'd taste all right.

It came out gorgeous and puffed and golden. The downside: After about 15 minutes in the oven, everyone in the house can smell the sucker and so you will have to endure a half-hour of constant whining and pacing in front of the oven window.

We ate ours with strawberries and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Well, everyone but me. You know I don't do breakfast food, so after the first bite, I foraged in the refrigerator and ate the leftover tabbouleh. And yes, I know that's wrong.

Now I know that most of you aren't going to eat anything this rich often, unless you want the Ass that Ate India, but I do recommmend that you try it. It's delish. Maybe for Father's Day, which is coming up. Face it, that man who never puts the toilet paper on right? He's still worth it.

If I Ran the Food Network: a riff

I admit it. I watch The Food Network a lot. More than I should. Example: a few months ago, I woke during the night to the sound of a strange, manly-type voice. My husband was sleeping solidly next to me, so I was a little alarmed. And then I heard giggling. Little girl giggling. And then I heard a teeny voice exclaim, "Bam!"

Miss M. had awakened, tottered down to the living room, turned on the t.v. and was enjoying her some Emeril. My obsession with the FN is rubbing off on the girls.

My girls love the Food Network, particularly Ace of Cakes. And can I just say right now that I have a strange crush on Duff? He floats my boat, he does. I can't explain it. I watch him massage a massive lump of fondant and I get a little sweaty.

But some of the other celebrities on the Food Network annoy me a little. Some of them (cough, cough, rhymes with Hachael Hay) annoy me a lot. Alas, Food Network has failed to contact me regarding my opinions of its stars, so I just have to dream about what I'd say.

Paula Deen: I do think you got spunk, honey, but Jesus you cook some nasty stuff! Deep fried macaroni and cheese? Seafood casserole with mayonnaise, soup and cheese? (white trash! Yeah!) I have never made a recipe from your show, admittedly. If I cooked like you do, I'd grow the Ass the Size of India.

Bobby Flay: How did you manage to nail that bangin' babe of a wife? I mean, I like your food and you seem like an okay guy and all, but you bear strong resemblance to Howdy Doody. Just sayin'.

Sandra Lee: You are fired.

Ina Garten: Will you marry me? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. And if you won't marry me, can I have Jeffrey? And that house in the Hamptons, as long as I'm askin'.

Giada de Laurentis: Yes, as a matter of fact, I have noticed that perky, ginormous rack of yours. No need to parade it around any more. Leave a little mystery there, wouldja?

Guy Fieri: Sure, you have a zippy personality. But really, have some self respect. Must you give your dishes names like Good Karma Shawarma and Rice a Monee? It makes my sphincter contract.

Robin Miller: Get thee over to Paula Deen's house and eat some of her food. You need home cookin' like nobody's business. When you walk, do your bones clank together?

Tyler Florence: Didn't you used to be kinda good looking? What happened?

Emeril Lagasse: Bam! That's the sound of my arteries exploding after eating your food. Go hang out with Paula, you'll like each other.

And I of course have the choicest of words for Rachael Ray but I'm trying to curb my colorful tongue, and if I said what I'd like to, I'd owe the Dirty Word Jar in the kitchen a month's worth of grocery money.

But you know it'd be true.

If you care to disagree with me or agree with me or add choice tidbits of your own, feel free. I know I've missed someone (or two) and I love to hear you talk.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Eggplant Dip

The Good:

Everyone has their Happy Place and mine is Whole Foods. Everything in that place glistens. Blood-red cherries, plump heirloom tomatoes, fragrant parcels of basil and rosemary...I am seduced every time. And don't even get me started on the fish counter. Suffice it to say that sashimi grade tuna makes my heart pound almost as much as Daniel Craig.

Have you ever seen a grouchy Whole Foods employee? Me neither. They're always cheerful and patient and happy to chat about the pros/cons of the English Stilton vs the Maytag Blue. I do not know for certain, but I suspect the break room in Whole Foods is equipped with a valium salt lick. Whole Foods employees are blissed out.

Even the huge-ass bill and the ugly chaos that is the Boulder Whole Foods parking lot fail to sour me on the place. But really, there is no more frightening place than that parking lot. If there's any place I'm going to get my ass handed to me on a platter, it's that parking lot. Even with the extra spaces they added.

After wandering around dreamily for at least an hour, I checked out with a big old jar of tahini paste and some adorable aubergines and a big hunk of parm-reggiano and the Duel of the Eggplant Dips was on.

The Bad:

I washed the eggplants, pricked them several times with a fork and began making these two recipes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Bittman claims that roasting the eggplant makes all the difference, and he's a veggie-savvy guy, so I popped them into my 500 degree oven and waited. My not-very-clean 500 degree oven, I might add. Which is a big mistake.

Note to Self: do not cook anything in a rather dirty oven at 500 degrees unless you disable the smoke alarm.

After opening all the windows and disabling said smoke alarm, I had some nicely blistered eggplant. I took half the batch, chopped it finely, mixed it with lemon, garlic, olive oil and parm-reg and seasoning and...it was okay. The earth didn't move, but roasting did lend a nice smokiness and it was certainly edible. Didn't touch what we ate in Greece, though.

On to recipe 2. Popped remaining eggplant in the Cuisinart, threw in toasted pine nuts, lemon, garlic. Opened the can of tahini paste, which had completely separated, and began stirring...and stirring. Five minutes of stirring vigorously and finally I could add it to the mix and whir it all together. Add seasoning, plop it into a bowl and...

The Ugly:

Did you know that tahini paste is highly perishable and, if left on a shelf for months in a Whole Foods in the Rocky Mountains (where apparently nobody buys tahini paste so there's no turnover), becomes rancid?

Ask my garbage disposal, because that's where Recipe 2 ended up. At least I tried it before poisoning my guests.

I considered taking it over to my neighbor--the one who lets his schnauzer relieve himself in my front yard every morning--but I decided to be civil.

I'm done with eggplant. Good eggplant belongs to Greece, and I will be back.

ps: Asshole Neighbor with Perennially Pissing Schnauzer: I am not done with you.

Family Dinner Night 2: Big Fat Greek Feast

I know I'm going to burn out on Greek food soon, but I bought all of this great stuff and I have people I owe big time for caring for Harryboy and Skipper the Guppy this past month. So I invited them to family dinner night--Greek style.

Now maybe that negates the "family" part of the dinner but we love a party, so I decided it's counting. The family will be part of the group of revelers, so there.

I've never made souvlaki before. Turns out, souvlaki is just a glorified kebab. Chicken is the most family friendly of meats, so I marinated it overnight in olive oil, garlic, lemon, pepper and fresh oregano. If you use fish--we had swordfish souvlaki in Greece and it was delish--don't marinate it more than an hour. Lemon juice+fish=ceviche. And lemon juice+fish+long marination=mush.


Thread the chicken onto skewers with peppers and onions, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill away. I did omit the onion from the kids' skewers and I also picked off the little green flecks of orgegano on the chicken. Kids.

On the side, I served tabbouleh, which I love. I pretty much knew the girls were going to rate tabbouleh a 0.0--it's swimming in green stuff and has onions in it and bulgur is a homely, suspicious-looking grain. So my expectations were low but I gave it the good college try.


I like Ina Garten's recipe for tabbouleh--it's very heavy on lemon and herbs and vegetables, just like tabbouleh should be. It annoys the heck out of me when restaurants serve tabbouleh that's mainly just bulgur with a couple of chunks of cucumber/tomato in it. Cheap little rottweilers! Tabbouleh is about the fresh stuff, not the inexpensive wheat.

Here's Ina's recipe:

Chicken with Tabbouleh (I left out the chicken)
from Barefoot Contessa Family Style
serves 6-8

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup bulgur
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
1 whole (2 split) chicken breasts, bone in, skin on
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup minced scallions, white and green parts (1 bunch)
1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves (2 bunches)
1 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley (1 bunch)
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, halved lengthwise, seeded and medium-diced
2 cups halved cherry tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a heat-proof bowl, pour the boiling water over the bulgur wheat. Add the lemon juice, 1/4 cup olive oil and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. Stir. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the bulgur to stand at room temperature for about an hour.

Place the chicken breast on a baking sheet and rub it with olive oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for 35-40 minutes, until just cooked. Set aside until cool enough to handle.

Remove chicken meat from the bones and discard the skin. Cut the chicken into medium dice and add to the tabbouleh. Add the scallions, mint, parsley, cucumber, tomatoes, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Season to taste and serve immediately or cover and refrigerate. The flavors will improve as it sits.

There is no substitute for freshly squeezed lemon juice. (Ina's note, not mine).

A few little things from me: If you don't have scallions on hand, use red onion, but only half the amount. The color is pretty. Some people complain that Ina's recipes are too salty. These people are morons. Ina specifically calls for kosher salt in her recipes and she means it. Regular table salt is WAY more potent than kosher salt. So buy some! You'll discover that you really like it, honest. Definitely make this a few hours ahead; it tastes better. Right before you serve it, taste for salt/pepper. Sometimes, when salads chill, they absorb the seasonings and you find that they need more oomph.

I rounded out our party menu with warm pita, hummus (Sabra brand, the only kind my kids will eat), olives and chunks of feta on tomatoes. I found these beautiful heirloom guys at Whole Foods.


And yes this was the perfect opportunity to monkey around with that eggplant dip. But that's a whole nother story in itself.

Miss D. dashed my hopes early in the day by gagging at the smell of the parsley and mint I was chopping.

"That smell! Ooooooh, I can't stand it!" she yelled, with her usual dramatic flair. And then she hurled herself out the door into the backyard.

Her sister followed of course, one hand plugging her nose. Kids.

The guests deemed my dinner delicious.

The girls wouldn't touch it. They wouldn't even abide by the two bite rule. Even when I re-plated the chicken after removing all evidence of the tabbouleh from their sight. Not one morsel of that carefully de-greened, de-onioned chicken passed their lips. I offered ketchup (hey, I was desperate). No dice.

"I know, Mama, since we didn't eat dinner, we don't get anything else to eat tonight," Daphne cheerfully announced as I took away their plates.

Pretty sad when your kid is relieved at the prospect of starvation.

Greek Dinner: 0
Mommy: 0
Tabbouleh: 0.0

But on to the eggplant dip.

Why I Almost French-Kissed the Fed-Ex Dude: A Rainy Day Story

Rainy days--the kind where it beats down and just doesn't stop, then stops for a second and gives you hope, and then starts up again with malice--blow. They especially blow with 2 feral critters who cannot be trusted in the same room together.

MommysheistouchingmeMommyImeanitIamgoingtothunkherontheBUTTifshedoesitagainand...

Butit'snotfairMommyshetouchedmefirstandshewon'tgivememyTinkerbellstickerbackshemean...

Yeah. Those kind of days.

We tried to see a movie but it was sold out (there must be more people out there with ferals than I thought).

We did this.

We did this WAY too much.



We had to have a snack every 15 minutes. And then as soon as we got it, we didn't like it any more.

We endured 45 minutes of sheer hideousness and havoc (our fault, all of it) in the doctor's waiting room. Only to hear that we "just gotta wait and see what happens" to that ferocious looking spider bite.

Mommy lost it and made Things 1&2 have quiet time, which is supposed to last an hour but lasted 10 minutes today because Harryboy peed on Minxette's comforter. Harryboy is mad at us for being MIA this month.

Mommy gave up and put on a movie in the man-cave. With popcorn, the 21st snack of the day. And then she spied out of her little eye...the Fed-Ex Dude! With a big old box from Wisconsin! My booty from Grecian Imports had arrived!

When the going gets tough, Mommy makes herself a snack.

The feta from the Kroger passed muster. It was barrel-aged, so it was a little smokier than the ones I ate in Greece, but it still had that lemony back note to it and wasn't crumbly or over-salted.


The olives were bliss. I usually don't even like green olives, but these guys were keepers. I think I'll marinate some of them in lemon zest, bay and oregano.

I heated up the grill pan, brushed the pita with olive oil and toasted that good lookin' fella right up. I have a feeling I am going to have a freezer full of pita the next time I place an order, because they are that good. I thought I'd gotten an okay facsimile earlier this week at Whole Foods, but nope, these were far better.


I ate the entire bowl of tzatziki with the pita, so I decided to leave the Jordan almonds until later. But they are in the pantry, whispering my name.



40 minutes later, the Zoo came up the stairs, clamoring for attention and books and drinks. I decided to send them outside to splash in the puddles. Mommy needed just a few more minutes with herself. Fed-Ex Dude, you rock.

She's Just Not That Into You: a rant

Dear chefs, Food Network stars, cooking magazine editors, etc.:

If I see one more recipe this year using fennel , I am going to blow the bejeezus out of my skull. I am over fennel, get it? Quit trying to shove fennel down my throat; it's making me cranky. I don't even like fennel, and I suspect the only people who do are those freaks who hoard the black jelly beans at Easter.

Fennel is hairy, awkward looking and a bitch to pair with wine. It tastes like anise, for chrissakes. Even if you cook the shit out of it, you can taste that icky anise. I sure as heck wouldn't pour ouzo over my risotto, so why are you asking me to cook the vegetable equivalent into it?

Even Ina Garten, who admits she doesn't like fennel, is cooking with it. What kind of strange brainwashing is going on here? Even heroin dealers don't push their product that hard.

So I beg of you please. Cease and desist with the fennel. It's getting old.

And while I have your attention, I'd just like to add some other food trend thingys that I'm over:

~Butternut Squash: You were interesting maybe 5 years ago. If I have to endure another Autumn of butternut squash soup recipes, I'm going to drink hemlock. Ditto that for the roasted butternut squash side dishes. Even if you gussy it up with orange or maple syrup or curry powder, butternut squash is a yawner.

~Parsnips: Yeah, what I said to the squash. At the end of the day, you are just an albino carrot, so quit trying so hard.

~Dried Cranberries, Apricots and Cherries: Get out of my savory food, you chewy cretins! Get out of my couscous, my pilaf, my pasta salad. No, you don't add interest to the dish. You just get stuck in my teeth.

~Fava Beans and Ramps: Understand this--Spring belongs to Asparagus. It just does. Always has. You were never contenders, so get out of every Spring recipe in every food magazine that I read.

~Polenta: You suck.

~Pomegranate: I get it, you are healthy. But I am still not sprinkling your sour, strangely crunchy self over my salad.

~Truffle butter: Maybe if I'm eating pasta at Harry's Bar; otherwise, bugger off. And don't even think about showing up on a burger or in mac and cheese. Gag.

~Oatmeal: Unbeknownst to you, I broke up with you this morning. Even jazzed up with brown sugar and half and half and pecans, you don't cut it. I've tried for years with you, but you just can't seem to change, so it's over. You're gruel darling, I'm sorry.

I should feel relieved after this rant, but I'm not. Because I'm sensing that there's another really annoying food trend lurking around the corner. Waiting for me.

If you are peevish and need to rant at seemingly innocent foodstuffs, feel free to do so below.

Crete and day old bread

I know you don't understand the title, but give me a little time. I'll somehow make it work.


Anyways, I don't have too much that's interesting to write about Crete--not that it isn't beautiful, because it IS.

It's just that we spent most of our time seeing historical ruins, which was incredibly interesting to my history-geek husband, but I don't think you all would appreciate a detailed lecture about the Palace of Knossos. Although it was very cool and hubby got to pretend to slay a Minotaur.


You probably don't want a lecture about the Temple of Poseidon, either. Even though it was quite impressive and made us feel very small.

You probably don't care too much about a church settled on the tip of "Athena's Rock," a large cliff that, when you climb it, gives you an amazing view of the city.


You might be amused and appalled, as I was, to discover that there are Tossers out there who will tag beautiful churches in historically rich places...even though you cannot argue with their musical taste.



I could rattle on about them, and you might even be kind enough to listen, but truth be told, we didn't do much except view these wonders, which took ten hour days to travel to and explore. The rest of the time, we couldn't much be bothered to leave our hotel because we got a surprise upgrade to a room that had this on our back patio. I know, I hate me, too.




We did stumble upon some open air markets and I again had to marvel how you could just saunter down the road and find places that sell zucchini blossoms and fresh snails and amazing fish. That's the good life, if you ask me.




I'd love to tell you about the restaurants on Crete, but I'm going to be lame about this too, because we were exhausted after our day trips and our hotel had an adorable taverna right in it's own backyard.

I know.

But one thing I DO want to talk about is dakos. Dakos is a Cretan salad that we found everywhere we went on the island. Basically, dakos is made up of day old bread, fresh tomatoes and feta cheese, drizzled with olive oil and oregano. It's delicious and quite a clever way to use leftover bread, if I say so myself.

Dakos reminded me of the Italian dish panzanella, which is a salad made up of cubes of day old baguette, tomatoes, onions, basil and sometimes cucumber, bathed in viniagrette. I make it in the summer when the herb garden explodes on me and I have basil coming out my ears. Try it on a hot summer night with a chilly glass of pinot grigio--your body and your taste buds will thank you.

And thinking about dakos and panzanella got me thinking about old bread. I always have old bread hanging around, and I bet you do, too.

Growing up, my mother took day old french bread, buttered it, popped it under the broiler, slathered it with jam and fed it to us kids, calling it "party toast." She's a clever cricket, my mother. Serve a kid anything with the word party in front of it and it'll be down the gullet in no time.

My grandmother used day old bread to make bread pudding. Bread pudding is a delicious way to make "something outta nothin'," but I can't recommend it because if I used all of my leftover bread that way, I'd be bigger than a barn. Bread, cream, sugar and eggs...my butt grows just thinking about it.

I'm not very creative with my ugly ends of baguette--I usually make croutons. Bo-ring.

It gets me wondering--how do you, gentle readers, deal with day old bread? And since day old bread is, I think, probably a world-wide problem, in kitchens around the globe, do you suppose that every culture/cuisine has some dish that uses leftover bread? Well, maybe not all cultures--some cultures are grappling with leftover rice instead, but still.

I can rattle off a few. Italy has panzanella and ribollitta, the vegetable soup that uses day old bread as a base. England/Ireland has bread pudding. Greeks, dakos. I think in the Middle East they make a salad a lot like panzanella but with leftover pita/flatbread? Mexico has chilaquales, a dish with leftover tortillas, stir fried with meat, chiles, eggs, whatever is in the pantry. Someone invented strata, the savory breakfast dish that you refrigerate overnight before baking...true genius, although I can't say I like it much.

Any other things you can think of? Do you have a clever trick like party toast or are you a boring crouton maker, too?

See? I told you I'd make that odd title work for me. It might not be elegant, but you know enough not to expect that from me.

Feta cheese and other gripes

Now that I've been to Greece and tasted what real feta cheese tastes like, I can't eat the crumbly, oversalted crap that I've eaten happily for years. That place ruined feta for me. It also ruined olives, olive oil, tomatoes, yogurt and pita bread. Allow me to explain.

Feta: Greek feta isn't lip puckeringly salty like the affordable kind I buy at the Kroger. It's salty, but it also has a lemony back note to it and a creamy sweetness that lingers after you eat it. It's not grainy, either. I never would want to eat U.S. feta cheese by itself; the stuff is just too aggressive. But Greek feta? You betcha.

Olives: Did you know that olives actually taste like something besides salt? Me neither. Some olives I ate in Greece had a pleasant, kind of grassy flavor. Some had a citrusy thing going on. Others, especially the black ones, had a meaty flavor...you know, that umami quality that is hard to explain but delicious nonetheless.

Olive oil: I've seen chefs on the Food Network drizzle olive oil over a finished dish and franky, I never understood why. Why add more fat? I guess I really didn't understand that some olive oils have flavor. The light, flavorless olive oil I use for cooking isn't the only game in town. The oil the Greeks drizzle over their grilled vegetables adds something--it's herbaceous and clever and somehow makes the vegetables more vegetabley, if that makes any sense.

Yogurt: Greek yogurt is thick, rich and subtly tangy. More like sour cream. Which makes it persona non grata with my husband, but he won't even eat American yogurt, so who cares? I've always had a soft spot for tzatziki , the sauce of garlic, yogurt and cucumbers that the Greeks drizzle on grilled meat and pita. But tzatziki made with Greek yogurt? Addictive. I ate it with a spoon (much to the disgust of my husband).

Tomatoes: Just take my word for it. Totally different. Actually, most vegetables there just taste better. They tell me it's the soil and the water. Whatever it is, it works. I mean, you walk down the street in Greece and stumble on markets that sell stuff like this:


Pita: Guess what? That crumbly, cardboard textured stuff you make your sandwich with? It's not pita. The Greeks make light, spongy, fluffy pita and they don't open it to make a "pocket." They lightly grill it, place a kebab and some tzatziki on it and fold it up, calzone-style. It's far less messy and the bread doesn't get soggy and break apart in little chunks. Brilliant!

So what's a land-locked, newly picky Westerner to do? Thanks, Greece, you asshole! You've made a snob out of me. A snob who is craving Greek food with annoying regularity now.

Luckily, I picked up a few bottles of olive oil in Greece and toted them back with me. The tomatoes, well, I know I'm screwed there so I'm not even going to try. Greek yogurt, bless it's heart, is now widely available--even my Kroger carries it. But you have to use at least the 2% kind, not the fat free glop.

The pita, the olives and the feta? Problematic. I did find imported Greek feta--one kind--lolling near the back of the cheese department in my hometown Kroger. It was 10 bucks for 6 ounces. Suckage!!! Of course I bought it anyways. Taste test pending.

Thank God for Google. I found a place in Wisconsin (Wisconsin? Of all places.) that ships products from Greece to spoiled shmucks like myself. So I ordered pita and a bunch of olives. And I threw in some Jordan almonds just for good measure, because they are scrumptious.

A Greek feast awaits us later this week, after the meat marinates in lemon, olive oil and oregano. But for now, I have a serious date with that pita and some homemade tzatziki. I might eat the whole batch myself. Shhhh, don't tell.

Tzatziki

1 cup Greek yogurt, such as Fage (at least 2%)
1 shallot, minced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced (I always use 2...love me some garlic!)
1/2 of an English hothouse cucumber, grated (you can peel it if you want but I like the color of the skin)
1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped
dash of cayenne (NOT traditional at all, but I love the hint of heat it gives)
squeeze of lemon
salt and pepper to taste

If you have the time, place the shredded cucumber in a colander and sprinkle with a little salt. Let it rest for 20 minutes over a bowl to catch excess water. After 20 minutes, rinse the cucumber, pat dry and mix with the remaining ingredients. Let sit for at least a half hour in the refrigerator to let the flavors blend. Serve with grilled pita.

If you don't have the time or patience to salt the cucumber, it'll still be fine. Your tzatziki will be a little more watery, but unless you are a purist, it'll still be pretty good.