It's a Greek Kind of Night

Well, I went on a bit of a domestic bender today.....laundry, dishes, compost, recycle, kitty litter, and three different recipes.

This is what I do went my Hubby is on a school course for his new career.

Anyhoo, this post will not be all Greek (haha, bad pun, I know!) to you but you will make great Greek food!

Let's get started. There are three parts to this post.

Part One: Greek Salad

All the veggies here are from my amazing Farm to Fork Co-op except for the red pepper.

NB: I'm using a red pepper in lieu of green as too much green pepper gives me an upset tummy, same goes for the onions (which were not used)

I like to cut my cucumbers (also known as cukes) in half, then thirds, thirds again, and then dice the remaining. It makes them mostly a uniform size

Tomatoes: Instead of using a chef's knife, I used a serrated bread knife. Works great for slicing the slippery things that are tomatoes.

Slice in quarters width wise, then into thirds, and roughly quarters again. You want them the same size as the cukes.

 Pepper: Cut the four sides off, and gut the red bugger. Shed no tear for the baby green pepper inside.

Use the same process for the pepper as the above veggies.

Now to make the salad dressing.

Here I have olive oil (Greek, did you expect less?) canola oil (to cut the taste so it is not as olive-y), lemon juice (use fresh lemons if you can, but I'm not paying out the nose for them at this time of year) and Epicure's Greek dressing mix. 

If you don't have a go-to for Greek dressing, you can use the Clubhouse mix, or use equal amounts thyme, oregano, basil and some salt and pepper.

Oh yeah, and feta. Any feta will do. I love feta....


Pour about 1/4 cup of each oil into a leak proof container (jam jars work great), 1/4  cup of lemon juice, and two heaping tablespoons of the dressing mix.

Shake, shake shake.

Now grab your feta. If you are using the brine-d feta, I like to rinse it off (I like to tell myself that there's less sodium that way)

I used about half the amount in the container. Chop your feta into whatever size you like, but I prefer the smaller bits evenly distributed in the salad over big hunks.

I swear to God that the cheese isn't pink; it's just that I am wearing a pink shirt right now....please believe me. 

Told ya the cheese wasn't pink! Place the chopped feta in the dressing to marinate it (cheaper than buy the per-marinated feta)  and give it a shake. Give the jar to a kids for them to shake.

When you are ready to serve, spoon the dressing over the salad (I don't pour it on and sit because the veggies will go soggy right quick and I can control how much dressing and cheese goes on my salad)

Part Two: Greek pork burgers

Here I have local ground pork (thank you Notta Farms for your happy piggies!), certified GF otameal, salt, pepper, frozen chopped spinach (you can totally use fresh but I was using what I had on hand), garlic and thyme (bonus point if you are using thyme that Hubby brought back from Greece from the last deployment!)

I originally started off with about 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup of frozen spinach, but quickly doubled that.

Nuke in the microwave until the spinach is warm and wilted and let it sit a bit prior to adding to the meat (you don't want to cook the meat!)

A teaspoon of thyme, and salt and pepper.

Smashed and chopped garlic which was added to the warm spinach.

 Now dump in about a cup (should use a titch less next time; perhaps 3/4 cup would be good) and stir stir stir.

Dump the greens into the pork and mix until combined (just promise that you won't stir the living life out of it).

I made four ginormous burgers, and I probably could have managed to make them into six, but I have a hard time judging size when it comes to burgers. Don't look at me that way....I just grab handfuls of meat and make it into a ball.

I let them rest in the fridge for a few hours before throwing them on the BBQ, but you can totally cook them right away. BBQ, oven, frying pan, grill pan on the stove, electric grill, use what you have on hand.

Just promise that you won't overcook them (see below; slightly charred) but make sure that the internal temperature reaches 170 F to ensure that any nasty bacteria are flambeed.

Part Three: Tzatziki (or however you spell it)

Here I used half a cuke, about a cup of plain Greek yoghurt and about two tablespoons of Tzatziki mix from Epicure (if you haven't used their products, they are fabulous, local, and great. Been using them for almost 20 years!)

 Grate half a cuke (great job for kidlets, especially since bits of cuke generally go flying, which I'm sure they love)

Eat the end piece of the cuke prior to the box grater grating your fingers off!

Mix the cuke, mix and yoghurt, and let them become a happy threesome in the fridge. The longer they sit the better friends they become to your taste buds.

Ta Daa!!!! Dinner!

Mexican Shepherd's Pie

So, now that you have heaps of leftover taco meat, and I'm sure you're sick of taco salad, here's something of a new breed.

You have two ways this can be done; microwave or oven/toaster oven. Use whatever method you prefer or is easiest.

Start by peeling and chopping some potatoes (in my case I used two because they were quite large)

You can boil them or nuke them in the microwave. I chose the microwave, as I have the world's slowest heating stove. I cried at a bit as the largest nuke-proof dish was a glass mixing bowl which was a tad bit awkward.

Grab yesterday's leftover protein

 Cook the potatoes until they are fork tender. Since I nuked mine, I added a spoonful of water prior to plastic wrapping the bowl and cooking for about 8 minutes.

 Have a glass of wine while you wait for the 'taters to cook.

Option A: Use a square baking dish. Option B: Use a few individual sized dishes. Guess which I chose?

NB: The little plastic containers got tossed in the freezer for a later date.

By now your potatoes should be done. I didn't even drain the water, just tossed a few spoonfuls of milk and some salt and pepper. 

Very daintily spread your gloriously mashed potatoes on top of the meat mixture and revel in the simplicity of the beauty. 

Secret Ingredient Time: CHEESE! (This is a scrumptious 5 year old cheddar from Costco)

Now to cook it. If you meat mixture is cold, nuke in an oven proof dish until you can see juices starting to bubble up (see below dish) OR, if you have already warmed up your meat, just place the potatoes right on top, then the cheese. Nuke until the cheese is melted and just started to crust up at the edges.

You can totally cook the whole dish in the microwave from start to finish (the cheese even bubbles up nicely) or you can finish in the oven/toaster oven to get that killer brown cheese crust

Top with some avocado, and salsa if you have any (I just used my last jar....waaaaah, so I used homemade tomato chili sauce instead)

ENJOY!

Taco-Esque Salad

Hi Everybody! Happy almost done January! (it's the small things that get you through the day, right?)

Today's post is brought to you by me wanting Mexican food without a lot of work and calories.

Start with whatever you have in the kitchen that works with your budget, taste buds and whimsy.

Me, I had grass-fed ground beef (which if you haven't tried, is amaze-balls).

Also featured are an onion, tomato, avocado (I currently have EIGHT!!!! Thank you to my Farm to Fork Cood Co-op!) Beans of choice, corn (frozen, canned, fresh, work with what you got), a bag a kale mix (thanks Costco) and some fabulous gluten free corn crackers (again, Costco!) and chili powder.

Start by tossing a large-ish frying pan on the stove over high heat, and add a spoonful of olive oil (unless you are not using lean/extra-lean meat, then there is no need)

Once the pan's hot, place the meat in and crumble and poke until it is cooked through.

Sometime while your protein is cooking, chop an one large onion into small-ish pieces and add to the pan once the meat is almost done.

Let the onion cook until soft, then add the chili powder. Use your judgement; a little or a lot, feel free to add chipotle powder or hot sauce as required.

If you are trying to sneak in additional vegetables for kids or Kid 2.0 (aka Hubby), grated carrot blends in great when it is cooked up with the onion and meat. 

Next open a toss in the corn and beans. No need to drain them, just add them in, and explain to your cat, AGAIN, that it IS. Not. TUNA. Just because it comes in a can does not mean that everything is tuna.

Stir the pan, and let it come back up to a simmer. You want to warm everything up, and let some of the liquid evaporate.

Impatiently wait for the pan to finish cooking, and chop a tomato and cube up some avocado while you wait.

Grab some of the kale mix (or lettuce, coleslaw mix, whatever you have) and place some in a bowl, followed by the meat mixture, chopped tomato and avocado. Finish with the corn crackers, and top with some salsa (not picture because I was an airhead)

If you can find these corn crackers, they are really really good.