Another tasty night

Yesterday afternoon I spent several hours in the kitchen with my mom. I love spending time cooking. The baby was being an absolute doll and was entertaining herself quietly in the playpen. (Except for one much-needed bottle fuss, which was right on time for her new schedule. Yay, schedules!)

I made pita bread from scratch. I've discovered it's incredibly easy and I love working with the dough, feeling it change as the yeast starts to interact, feeling the gluten strands start to stretch and become elastic and... it's fabulous. I love the smell as it starts to rise and then simply go into nose heaven as it bakes. *happy sigh*

I had made batches of hummus the night before, so that was taken care of. Mom found a recipe for tziki sauce (I have no idea how to spell that and don't feel like looking it up, so sorry). I hate yogurt, always have, and it amazes me that I love this sauce so much. It's simply yogurt, cucumbers, onions, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Fabulous!

Our salad consisted of romaine hearts, a cucumber, two tomatoes (the seeds of which I removed and ate greedily), artichoke hearts, black and green olives, roasted red peppers, sweet onions, green onions, feta cheese (of course!) and some of those sour sandwich peppers that I adore. My Greek dressing turned out wonderful as well.

Mom made a black olive, green olive, garlic, and olive oil spread for the bread as well. Yummo, as RR would say.

I love cooking things from scratch. There is something so satisfying about it. Not to mention, of course, that doing things from scratch is tremendously cheaper than buying things premade.

We realized the other night that we don't ingest a single item that has high fructose corn syrup in it. We occasionally have a soda. Maybe once a month. Other than that everything we make at home is pretty much free of all that crap. Isn't that fabulous?

The dinner was a big hit for all three of us. I enjoyed it as much as the gyro platter we get from a local restaurant and didn't even miss the meat. Especially since my Greek salad was so big!