Make Your Own Gyros

Once you've made tzatziki, it's pretty much a given that you're going to start thinking about making your own gyros. For those of you thus far unfamiliar with the gyros, it's a Greek "fast food" sort of dish. The name refers to the large turning spit containing a roast; (gyros is cognate with Modern English gyrate, to turn). Slices of the moist-but-crispy meat are combined with tazatziki, Greek yogurt-dill-and-cucumber sauce, on a pita. Other ingredients, like tomato, or feta, or lettuce or even pepper, salt, and paprika, are optional. In Greece gyros are common fare at small cafes and street carts. The Greeks borrowed the basic idea from Turkey, where the same dish is called a dönor kebab or "turning roast." The gyros and the dönor kebab have spread from the mediterranean to the world, including Europe and the U.S. In the U.S., the meat is generally either lamb, or a combination of lamb and beef. There are other variations as well; in Greece, gyros are often made with pork, and are almost always served with fried potatoes. Here in Washington, the meat is a combination of lamb and beef, usually purchased from one of the two main restaurant providers (linked below), and served with local onions, tzatziki, imported Pita (from Seattle), and dolmades on the side. If you're tired of waiting for a Greek festival, you can make your own gyros. Making fresh gyros at home is a great way to start enjoying a Mediterranean diet.

There are two ways of going about making your own gyros; first, the easy way, and then, the hard way. The easy way involves making your own tzatiki, and purchasing the gyros meat. You'll need to find a good source of fresh pita. It's really important that it be fresh. Try your local Persian/Mediterranean market, if your grocery store's offerings don't appeal. Be sure to check frozen sections too—and if you're lucky enough to be near one, Trader Joe's is often a good source for locally baked fresh pita. You should keep an eye out for feta too; and if you buy it at a deli, ask for a sample first. There's a wide range in feta flavors, from mild and creamy, to tart and tangy. Next, you'll need fresh lettuce, onions, and tomatoes. If you can't find sweet onions, red onions are fine and add a nice touch of color.

Now then, finding the gyros meat, or the dönor kebab meat (it could be labeled either way) can be tricky. Ethnic grocery stores often carry gyros meat in their frozen foods; it's typically made by one of two companies Corfu Foods, or Kronos. If you've ever had a gyros in a mall food court, the meat probably came from Kronos. If you have an oven with a small rotisserie, both companies have small roasts that will fit. Both also sell pre-cooked frozen gyros meat, ready to re-heat and serve. You can also buy gyros meat online from Parthenon Foods.

Now then, for those of you who want to make your own gyros; it's a bit of work, but you can make enough to freeze. The typical style of rotisserie gyros is built by layering and stacking uncooked meat on the giant skewer, then trimming it until its cone-shaped. As the meat cooks on the spinning rotisserie, the grease and fat drips down and off the bottom, so that the meat is both moist and lean. The cook slices thin slivers of perfectly cooked meat off just before putting in a pita. An alternative method for at home cooks, is to create a meatloaf, and then slice it for use in a gyros. The meat is either half beef and half lamb, or all lamb. Your first decision in terms of making it at home whether or not to start with all lamb, or half-and-half, the most common in American gyros. Then, you season the meat and prepare it according to one of these recipes: Greek-American gyros, and a discussion of the science behind his recipe and method, Alton Brown's gyros meat.

Image Credit: strph

My Grey Water Adventure

Last night, while my daughter had a bath, I was once again dipping into one of my favorite books, Above All, Be Kind. Though I still don’t allow her to be alone in the tub at age four, I also respect her desire to play alone in the water, so I usually bring a book or some writing to work on while she’s playing with her bath toys.

As I was reading again about Gandhi’s lovely quote—“My life is my message”—and Weil’s sage advice on leading by example, I was thinking about how I always drain my daughter’s water out as she exits the bathtub. It’s just an unconscious, automatic response to what I’ve done my whole life. But how could I waste so much water?

I’ve been teaching my daughter about how precious water is—how the world experiences shortages of water all over the globe, and how we just take it for granted that we have so much of it available. (In kid terms, of course: “Some people don’t have much water. We are very lucky! How can we save the water we use?” Her favorite answers are to turn off the sink and to give the cats water from our glasses before bed instead of dumping it out.)

How can I teach her this, though, when I’m constantly wasting our bath water—a valuable resource—right in front of her eyes? It’s not bad water, either; though a kid, she doesn’t get that dirty (well, she actually had sawdust in her hair on this particular occasion…!), and like my bath products, hers are eco-friendly. So I made a quick decision to try a hand at using grey water, or recycled water.

I’m glad I did it, but it wasn’t that easy! I don’t really have any great containers for getting water out of a bathtub, after all, so I ended up using one of the big bins we use to store our yarn and other craft supplies. I had to dip it in and make several trips—more than a dozen, I’m sure!—and there was still some water left when I drained it. It was tiring, too, carrying the heavy bin out first the back door, then the front, to water various flowers, the compost, and eventually just the grass.

My daughter watched me with round eyes. “What are you doing, Mommy?” I smiled, though strained, with sweat dripping in my glasses. “I’m recycling your bath water, sweetie. Just giving the flowers a drink!”

She smiled. “Can I help you?”

I eyed her nightgown and the clock, in that order. “Hmm. It’s getting late. Maybe next time, okay?”

“Okay.”

Next time, I will have to find something small for her to carry some water with—maybe her beach pail she uses for gardening?—because I know she’s going to love doing this. Of course, a siphoning device would be nice, too…

Shrimp Pasta Salad

Small, local "baby" or bay shrimp are appearing up and down the Oregon and Washington coasts.

I'm seeing fresh, never frozen shrimp between $3.00 and $4.00 a pound at both local fish markets and chain grocers. Quite often they're already cooked, but these will cook in a jiffy in some boiling lightly salted water; it's pretty much a matter of dip them in the water, wait three or 4 minutes, and cool them down with running cold water. You want to watch the shrimp carefully; they'll change color when they're cooked, and you want to remove them from the water immediately, and cool them down so they don't over cook and become rubbery.

They're perfect for chilled-make-ahead pasta salad. You can use elbow macaroni, or zitti, rotelle, or my favorite small or medium size shells, cooks and drained, then dressed with salad dressing of your choice (vinarette? lemon and garlic? seasoned mayo? The options are almost endless), add some chopped fresh herbs, a few fresh veggies (olives, peppers, cucumbers, halved cherry or grape tomatoes, celery, sweet red onion . . . even frozen peas!), mix gently, and chill at least a few hours, or better, overnight and then pack a cooler for the beach or the park.

The variations are endless, in terms of what to put in your shrimp and pasta salad, and how to dress it. I'd suggest looking at a few recipes, and decide on what your salad will have based on what you like and what's locally available and fresh. In general, I'd suggest 8 ounces of your favorite bite-sized cooked pasta, drained and cooled, and about a pound of cooked baby shrimp. This recipe uses a lemon-herb dressing with Mint and Tarragon, and slices of cucumber and fresh nectarine. This one uses cucumbers, tomatos, olives, red onion and fresh dill with a mayonaise dressing. This one uses grape tomatoes, pecans, arugula or spinach, fresh parsley or basil, and a lemon garlic dressing.

ETA: One of my all time favorite food bloggers, Elise of Simply Recipes, has just posted her own Shrimp Pasta Salad recipe. Mind, she starts out with frozen shrimp, but the poor woman lives in Northern California, where fresh local shrimp aren't nearly as easily come by as they are in Oregon and Washington.

Vegetarian Enchiladas

I loathe canned food as a rule, but enchilada sauce is one of the few exceptions.  Embarrassing as it can be to admit, especially here on a food blog, I honestly think that whoever came up with the idea of putting enchilada sauce in a can deserves some kind of medal!  

Enchiladas are one of the easiest, cheapest, most filling meals you can make on a budget short on time and cash.  All you really need is a can of enchilada sauce, a package of tortillas, a can of refried beans, and some shredded cheese.  (Sour cream is technically optional, but personally I consider it mandatory.)  

Mix half of the sauce with the refried beans and half the cheese to make the filling.  Fill the enchiladas and lay them in a casserole dish, seam side down.  Pour the other half of the sauce and the cheese over the top, and bake for a little while to make it all bubbly.  Seriously, how great is that?  It barely even counts as a recipe.

The enchilada is an authentically Mexican dish.  Although it comes in a broader variety of forms there compared to our relatively limited deployment of the enchilada here in the States.  Reading the Wikipedia page I was startled to learn of enchiladas montada, which are topped (mounted - "montada" in Spanish) with a fried egg.  And of the enchilada as street food, which is just a tortilla that you roll up and dip in the sauce.

After making enchiladas (the usual way) for dinner last night, I decided to poke around and see how you make "real" enchiladas.  It turns out that most of the recipes I encountered include… a can of enchilada sauce!  I guess that IS how you make real enchiladas, at least in the United States.

I found a lot of recipes which omitted canned enchilada sauce (good) but then had you use a jar of Pace picante or green chili sauce (bad).  Frankly I think that if you are making enchiladas with salsa instead of enchilada sauce, all you're really doing is making burritos.  Oven-baked burritos, to be sure, but burritos nevertheless.

(For the love of all that is holy, I must steer you away from the enchilada recipes which include cream cheese.  I found several.  Please, do not use cream cheese.  That's disgusting.)

The real deal is going to use a tomato sauce which is thin enough to pour well, and which is flavored with roasted chili.  I found a Food Network recipe which has you make your own from scratch, using a Mexican spice blend and a can of tomato paste.  Personally I have never made anything using canned tomato paste that didn't have a distinct taste of "canned tomato paste."  You know the taste I mean.

If I were going to make enchiladas from scratch, I would start with this recipe, which has you simmer down tomatillos with Serrano peppers.  Check out the first comment on the recipe - THIS sounds both authentic and GOOD!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user pbev

Almond Joy Pieces

It seems so obvious in hindsight: Reese's Pieces are little M&M-shaped versions of Reese's Peanut Butter cups.  A realization that was only recently made clear when Hershey trotted out Pieces versions of several other classics, including the beloved and relatively antediluvian Almond Joy candy bar.

The first thing I noticed about Almond Joy Pieces is that they come in three colors: blue, a brown so dark that it's nearly black, and a freaky ecru color which - as you can see from the picture above - is almost exactly the same color as my skin.  

Why choose such a strangely fleshy color for your candy?  It is not a very appealing color.  Maybe if I were darker, I would be more used to candy coming in the same color as my skin.  (I am pretty pale, as you can tell - I have that complexion that crisps to a bright lobster-y red at the mere thought of sun exposure.)

Furthermore, it's a confusing color choice.  I have pored over pictures of Almond Joy's packaging online, and I cannot find this shade of tan.  It is not the color of almonds.   I guess you could make a case that it is the color of "joy," but I can't bring myself to do it even in jest.

Once I averted my eyes, ignored the color, and carried on, I found a reasonably pleasant experience.  I actually think that the Mounds bar would have been a better choice for Pieces-izing.  The Almond Joy bar, much as I love it, has a little too much going on to be miniaturized.  Every Piece contains a candy shell, a coconut-ish filling which includes chocolate flavoring, and wee little bits of almond.  

It took a while to get used to the texture, partly because it's so unlike any other candy.  You come to expect certain things from a candy which is shaped like an M&M.  You expect a crunch, or at least a homogenized chocolatey filling.  Biting into the soft duff of finely shredded coconut is kind of strange at first!

One thing I like about the original Almond Joy bar is the big ol' almond.  There aren't many candy bars that don't chop up their almonds.  (For one thing, using chopped almonds is presumably cheaper, since you can chop sub-par almonds, but a whole almond has to be whole, unbroken, and fairly perfect.)  You get a really good bite, and a nice chunk of almond flavor.

This is missing from the Pieces experiment.  Instead it's one more little bit of chaff to tickle the back of your throat.  Honestly they could have left the almonds out and I probably never would have noticed the difference.  The same cannot be said for the full size Almond Joy bar!

In the end, I didn't really care for these.  But I have to admit I've always preferred the Almond Joy's sister candy, the Mounds bar, because of its rich dark chocolate.  Almond Joy's milk chocolate has always struck me as being too sweet by comparison.  And in the end, that's my judgment on these Pieces as well.

The Physics of Cold Spots: Part 1 of 2

Cold spots are one of the hallmarks of a haunting.  Any ghost hunter worth the title will carry some sort of thermometer for testing the temperature of the air.  Many people report that the ambient temperature drops when ghosts are present (or about to be present).  The standard explanation is that the spirits are drawing the energy from the air in order to manifest.  But what does that mean, and is it plausible?  

The phenomena of cold spots is well-known enough to be featured in television shows like Supernatural and movies like The Sixth Sense.  Just before a ghost appears, things get chilly enough that you can see the actors' breath.  There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence regarding cold spots.

A lot of "cold spot" accounts can be written off as a case of misidentification.  I know that I frequently mistake feeling hungry for feeling tired.  I think "Man, I'm really tired!"  But then I eat something, and magically I am no longer tired.  

Imagine then how easy it is to misidentify a physical sensation under stressful circumstances, like investigating a hallway where you just heard footsteps, even though you're alone in the house.  Under these terrifying situations, it's understandable that people could mistake the physical characteristics of fright - like the hair standing up on your neck and arms - for being cold.  

I immediately write off any accounts of cold spots where the cold spot is no colder than the ambient temperature outside.  Let's say it's 75 degrees inside a house, and 58 degrees outside, and a researcher measures a drop inside from 75 degrees to 62 degrees.  That's not a cold spot - that's a draft, straight up.  It may be a strange, irregular draft, or it may be a blob of cooler air from someone having opened a door earlier.  But it's not ghosts.

We're used to thinking of the air inside a house being pretty much the same temperature.  But if you start paying attention, you will notice it's not as homogenous as you think.  As you move through your home, you're constantly moving between pockets and zones of different temperatures.  You may never even notice - until a ghostly experience puts you on alert, and sharpens your attention.

As for the explanation that the spirits draw energy from the air in order to manifest.  This is possible, although incredibly inefficient.  You can tell it doesn't work very well just based on the fact that we don't do this!  Just look at how expensive it is to cool your house with an air conditioner.  

If it was possible to extract heat from air and use it as energy in any meaningful way, you wouldn't have to plug in an air conditioner - it would be able to suck energy from the air to run itself WHILE it cooled your room!  As awesome as that would be, it's not the way the world works.

In the next article, we will take a look at the Peltier effect, and why it may or may not be what ghosts are using.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Kansas Poetry (Patrick)

Starburst FaveReds

I never thought about it until I picked up this pack of candy, but the red Starburst flavors really are my favorites.   Apparently I'm not alone in this, because Starburst's new variant is called "FaveREDs," and includes only the red flavors: watermelon, cherry, strawberry, and fruit punch.  No lemon, no orange, just the good stuff.

Starbursts are one of those classic candies that people have developed an emotional attachment to.  If you say the words "Starburst candy" in a crowd, you can practically guarantee that at least one person's eyes will light up.  These candies have a distinct texture, occupying an in-between zone somewhere on the Venn diagram of taffy, the first few chews of a chunk of Hubba Bubba or Bubblicious, and the waxy chewiness of Skittles.  

When you pop a Starburst into your mouth, the first thing you taste and feel is that strange, waxy, almost plasticine flavor and texture.  It isn't until you start chewing that the flavor is released.  Is this on purpose?  I expect there is a lot of flavor science and food psychology behind it.  Paradoxically, it makes the candy seem to last longer.

The flavors themselves are sharp and distinctive, and definitely on the tangy side of the scale.  Although I always felt that some of their flavors - notably orange and lemon - really still need some work.  Thus, part of the genius of the FaveREDs package.

Of the four flavors, strawberry is probably my least favorite.  I'm not a big fan of strawberry favor to begin with.  Artificial strawberry flavor is kind of an abomination in my opinion.  This is the bright pink strawberry of Strawberry Qwik drink powder, and strawberry milkshakes at McDonalds.  There does seem to be something creamy about the flavor that balances out the tanginess, which is nice.

Fruit Punch is a new flavor to me.  Perusing the Wikipedia page, I guess this must be the flavor from the Tropical Fruit Chews assortment. It tastes almost exactly like Hawaiian Punch, which is a good thing.  It's a vivid flavor, even for Starburst.  So strong that it had me checking to see if it had turned my tongue red.

I kept getting Watermelon confused with Strawberry, because Watermelon is a lighter pink.  That doesn't seem to make sense to me, but what do I know.  This is a very tangy watermelon, I would almost consider it sour.  Which is good, because watermelon is one of those flavors that can easily come off as insipid and childish.  

The Cherry candy is almost indistinguishable from Fruit Punch.  They seem to occupy almost the same segment of the flavor spectrum, if you follow me.  This is a bright cherry, nothing subtle about it.  I must say, one good use of the Lemon Starbursts is to eat them along with a Cherry one, thus making cherry lemonade.  But I don't miss Lemon, with its sharp, Pledge-like aftertaste.

Overall, this mixture is a great step forward for candy-kind.  No longer will you have to set aside Lemon and Orange for last!

Scratch Or Feed?

Across the country, people's baby chicks are growing into pullets.  Aww!  They were so cute as chicks, and then they went through that ugly "baby dinosaur" phase, and now they are starting to look like real chickens.  Most people start getting their first egg between now and August (depending on when chicks came out in your area).  

So what do you feed them, and when?

"Starter feed" is what you feed baby chicks, and non-laying pullets.  Starter feed is high in protein and calories, to help give those babies all the building blocks they need to grow fast and strong.  However, it does not have very much calcium.  Certainly not as much calcium as a laying hen needs.

When a hen's body is making eggs, obviously it makes the egg shells out of calcium.  It takes this calcium from the hen's body.  Hopefully the hen's diet has enough added calcium that this is not a problem.  But if your hens aren't getting enough calcium, they will build eggs out of their bones (thus weakening their bone structure).  

Feeding a laying hen starter feed also causes very fragile, thin egg shells.  It is not uncommon for the egg to break inside the chicken.  This is, as you might imagine, very bad news for the chicken!  

Most sources recommend switching to layer ration (for laying hens) between 16-20 weeks.  Whenever is convenient for you within that range - for example, when your bag of starter feed runs out!  It's better to err a little on the early side than a little on the late side.  If you had to choose between converting at 16 or at 20 weeks, I would recommend 16 weeks.  This gives the hen more time to process the calcium in the feed before she starts laying.

Another option you will find at the feed store is called "scratch."  This is a blend of grains and cracked corn, and it's very cheap!  Almost cheap enough to become some kind of cliché.  Chickens LOVE scratch, no doubt about it!  However, scratch does not have very much in the way of nutrition.

A lot of people who free range their chickens feed only scratch, along with supplemental oyster shell.  They toss out a few handfuls of scratch every morning, and keep a dish of oyster shell around for the chickens to imbibe as they wish.  

This is an affordable and easy way to feed your flock, but it is probably not the best for them.  Layer feed has a lot of nutritional extras like vitamins and minerals, and is carefully balanced to provide your chicken the best meal possible.  If you are free ranging your chickens, they have access to a lot of different things to eat, but who's to say if they are getting all the right nutrition?

Another issue with scratch is that it is very fattening.  Think of it as Twinkies for chicken!  This makes it a good snack in winter when the weather is cold, when your chickens are moulting, or if you find you need to put a bit of weight on them.

Scratch is a great treat, but just like Twinkies, it's not a balanced meal!

Sour Nerds

The box of Wonka Sour Nerds caught my eye at the store last night.  For one thing, it was wrapped in cellophane, which was a little unusual.  And while I have heard of Sour Nerds for a while now, I hadn't tried any.  But in the name of broadening my candy horizons, lo, to include even sour candy, I decided to buy a box.

Unwrapping the cellophane wrapper was eerily reminiscent of opening a pack of cigarettes.  I'm sorry, can you give me a minute?  I quit smoking last September and sometimes… yeah.  Okay.  I think I'm alright now.  Okay.  Sure.  Let's talk about candy.

I was pleased that the box has remained unchanged from the days when I was a chubby little lass, trekking down the block to buy a box from the Qwik Stop after school.  You have one side and the other, and there's a complicated bit of fussery in getting your candy out.  And it's every bit as satisfying to tip your head back and knock the box against your teeth to get the candy out.

I am convinced that the package design is hugely responsible for the success of Nerds.  Picking at the tab to open the slot to pick out the slider to slide it out and shake it in your mouth, it's all very primal.  It speaks to the monkey parts of our brains which could happily spend a day licking a twig and sticking it into an anthill.  

Also unchanged is the somewhat vexing habit Nerds have of hopping boundaries.  You always find a few Nerds of one flavor in the other side.  It is inevitable as it is frustrating to those of us who get a little neurotic about our candy boundaries.  I mean, if I wanted a mouthful with the flavors mixed, I'd just open up both tabs and shake them into my mouth at the same time.

Once I got past my delighted fascination with the cardboard box design, it was time to try the candies.  Meh.  They weren't very sour.  I mean, Nerds are already a little on the tangy side.  These just have the tanginess amped up a little tiny bit.

I'm pretty sure the lemon is just the regular lemon flavor Nerds.  Maybe a little bit more so.  They taste almost exactly like dabbing a bit of Countrytime Lemonade powder on your tongue.  Not that you would ever do such a thing, of course.

The apple flavor had a nice little flavor of sour green apple.  It reminded me strongly of a green Jolly Rancher.  Pleasantly apple-y without being too tart.

The strangest thing is that, as you can see from the picture I took, there is a huge size disparity between the two flavors.  The apple ones are easily twice the size of lemon.  I have no explanation for this.

I also have no explanation for why these are being sold wrapped in plastic.  Aside from being a nefarious plot to make me think about smoking cigarettes, I mean, OBVIOUSLY.  But I hope this isn't part of a long-term project to start wrapping stuff in plastic.  THE LAST THING THE WORLD NEEDS IS MORE PLASTIC and Nerds have gotten along fine without plastic for some 20-odd years, thank you very much.

Rocky Road Candy Bar

After the horror that was my Fizzl'd Fruits Skittles experiment, you can only imagine the relish with which I launched into my Rocky Road candy bar.  I could barely stand to photograph it before nomming it.  It's a miracle that picture doesn't have a big sloppy bite mark in the side, Jaws-style!

I didn't even realize that rocky road was a thing until last Christmas, when I ran across a recipe.  All this time I thought it was just a delicious candy bar!  If you want, you can make a pretty decent pan of rocky road by melting up mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and peanuts.  I will say this: if you like your guests, you will refrigerate the pan, cut up the candy, and plate it fast before it starts to get sticky.  Homemade rocky road is incredibly sticky, and quite indelicate to eat.  Delicious, but indelicate.

Why not stick with the candy bar, instead?  Honestly in almost every respect, it's superior to the homemade version.  For one thing, the marshmallow is safely contained as filling, instead of jumbled all over the place.  This makes it far easier to eat.

For another thing, this flagship of the Annabelle Candy Company line features cashews instead of boring old peanuts.  And they're chopped small enough to provide some nice texture, without being overwhelming or obtrusive.  Just like the tiny flecks of almond in their U-No bar, actually.  They must have a giant machine whose sole purpose is to chop nuts to the same tiny size.

The marshmallow is tender, almost creamy.  It has a good solidity to it, whereas marshmallow filling is often too gooey or foamy.  In fact, it most closely resembles… a marshmallow.  Imagine that!  But the only other marshmallow candy I can think to compare it to is Peeps and Snowballs, neither of which are the least bit like a marshmallow.

The chocolate is lumpy and bumpy on the outside.  It has character!  But it's not sticky or melty, unlike "real" rocky road.  There is also a very rare Rocky Road bar made with dark chocolate, which has a gold wrapper.  These are almost impossible to find in the wild, although I spotted some at a Rite Aid over the weekend.  

I don't have a picture of this rare dark chocolate Rocky Road bar, because that time I couldn't resist, and snarfed the whole thing before I got home.  Mea culpa.  Suffice it to say, it's really tasty.  And its relative rarity makes it a very exciting find, for those of us who get excited about such things.  (Which is to say, fat girls.)

I've talked about the Annabelle Candy Company before.  Mass market candy is a particularly corporatized, sanitized, globalized market segment.  It's great to find unusual candy by small, family-owned manufacturers who are still holding out against the big guys.  So in addition to the sugar rush and the deliciousness, you get that golden smug feeling that comes from supporting the good cause with your hard-earned dollars!

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