Friday Food: Easter Gyros

Friday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, pasta with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, leftover green beans

Long version: Sysco food is not the most flavorful food. I got a 25-pound box of Roma tomatoes from the school Sysco program, and they were the hardest, palest, most flavorless tomatoes I have ever encountered. I used some of them to make a sauce for the kids' pasta. It was uninspiring, but serviceable.

The mozzarella was also from the Sysco program. Pre-shredded, part-skim mozzarella is not my preference, but you know what they say about beggars choosing.

Saturday

Short version: Roasted Italian sausage, roasted potatoes, roasted tomatoes, roasted green beans

Long version: ROAST ALL THE THINGS!

Actually, the tomatoes were greatly improved with roasting. Cubby took a bite and said, "Hey, these tomatoes actually taste like something." Indeed. It didn't hurt that I added salt, garlic powder, and dried oregano to them, too. They were good with the sausage, anyway.

Sunday

Short version: Lamb gyros, french fries, bunny cake with ice cream

Long version: It's a Greek Easter.

So I marinated a leg of lamb that A. had boned with a bunch of tomato juice left from when I was cutting up the sad tomatoes to roast, olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. It sat in the refrigerator for almost 24 hours, which was a good thing. Then I tied it up, browned it, and threw it in a 400 degree oven with the french fries.

While that was cooking, I was making the pita bread*.

You know what P.I.T.A. stands for? Yeah, these were that. The dough wasn't particularly difficult to make, but then each pita has to be rolled out with a rolling pin, using a lot of flour so that it doesn't stick. But then all that extra flour goes on the screaming-hot griddle along with the bread and there, it burns. So the ENTIRE TIME I was rolling out and cooking the breads, every single smoke detector in the house was going off and Cubby was running hysterically around the house opening every last window.

They were good, but I'm not convinced it was worth it.

Anyway, I made french fries just because I always like french fries. And this is the bunny cake:

Even by my low standards, this is an Ugly Cake. A bit creepy, too. Delicious, though!

Monday

Short version: Leftover meat pizza-style, potato slices, green salad

Long version: There was a bit of lamb left from the night before, plus a couple of sausages, so I sliced both of those thinly, fried them, and added some tomato sauce I had made earlier.

I actually made Finny's Sauce with the terrible tomatoes from Sysco. I didn't have any wine, either, and just used a bit of balsamic vinegar. Even with terrible tomatoes and no wine, that sauce is still good. Maybe I'll re-name it Finny's Magic Sauce.

This is still salad from MY LETTUCE HOORAY! The excitement never dims.

Tuesday

Short version: Sheep lap, curried split peas, baked potatoes, garlic bread, carrot sticks

Long version: Man, this was the most random meal ever.

The lap is the breast of the sheep. It's a very thin, fatty, and quite tough cut. I had seen somewhere that it can be used to make a sort of bacon, so A. found a recipe somewhere that called for a dry rub of salt, pepper, and brown sugar, and we left it in the refrigerator for two weeks.

The resulting meat was quite sweet. Not much like bacon, but it was reminiscent of the lamb ribs A. makes sometimes. So I baked it at a low heat for a couple of hours, adding paprika and garlic powder to it. This made a chewy, crispy, very fatty meat. A. and Cubby liked it, Poppy ate it, but Charlie and Jack tried it and refused. They had some cheese instead.

I mostly made the curried split peas and baked potatoes for me, because I love curry and potatoes. Rafael had given us all those split peas, and I used to sometimes make dal, which is made with split lentils. Lentils split smaller than peas, but the peas still cooked up pretty quickly. All I did was cook some diced onion and garlic in oil, fry some sweet yellow curry powder in there, then add rinsed split peas, salt, and water. I ate mine over a baked potato with sour cream on top, and it was delicious.

Let us pause for a photo of this year's floofy Easter dress. Sadly, it went unappreciated by our church at large, but we all appreciated it very much.

And I didn't have to worry about the clashing striped pants underneath, so that's a bonus.

Wednesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, rice, frozen green beans

Long version: That cheap Sysco ground beef is much better as thin hamburgers rather than meatloaf. Not as wet.

Thursday

Short version: Grilled cheese sandwiches, frozen green beans

Long version: Those who wanted pizza grilled cheese had the remainder of Finny's sauce with mozzarella and, in Cubby and A.'s case, anchovy paste.

Speaking of Cubby, I decided to try to include him in the preparations for Easter dinner by asking him to make a centerpiece for the table out of some of the modeling clay they got in their baskets. I suggested a bunny. This is what he put on the table:

The beheading of the creepiest Easter bunny in existence.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

* I used that recipe mostly because the author explained how her Palestinian grandmother used to make bread: She saved a small ball of dough from each batch and dropped it right into a bag of flour for the next batch. SEE? SEE?! No one is throwing away flour in places where food is hard to come by. (And where bread is made frequently.)