What's Cookin'?

If you don’t know what to make for dinner tonight, you could making what I’m making, grilled Greek chicken pitas with homemade tzatziki sauce. It used to be one of everyone’s favorite meals, until my tween, S, was sick one night and the smell of the grilled chicken made her want to throw up. It doesn’t smell bad, really, unless you are sick or something. Plus, it’s so easy to make, it practically makes itself.

I always start by marinating my chicken. I buy boneless chicken breasts and then cut them in half horizontally so that they are “cutlets.” The thinner chicken pieces will cook faster and more evenly. Plus, have you looked at the size of the chicken breasts you can buy at the grocery store these days? These chickens shouldn’t be endorsed by Paula Deen; they should have Dolly Parton on the packages. Seriously, I don’t know how chickens strut around and peck with those giant titties throwing them off balance. They must look even more awkward in heels. You don’t need that much breast meat. Seriously, more than a handful is too much. A serving size should be roughly the size of your palm.

Anyway, I slice them and then shove them in a Ziploc bag with some vinaigrette salad dressing, chopped garlic, and a hefty squirt of Dijon mustard.  It doesn’t matter what kind of dressing, but they do sell Greek dressing, for those of you who are really concerned about getting the right flavor profile. I don’t know what the garlic and mustard does that the salad dressing doesn’t do, except make it sound like I thought up something special. I didn’t. It’s just salad dressing and mustard and garlic. Bam!

Next, I make my own tzatziki sauce. This is where you get to impress the whole table. Sure, you can buy a pretty tasty version at Trader Joe’s, except they put too much dill in theirs, and dill is the devil of the herb world. Plus, it’s super easy to make.

You need a good sized cucumber and some Greek style yogurt to make the sauce. I like to buy giant hothouse cucumbers, the ones that come shrink wrapped for your protection. They are all stacked up neatly in their prophylactic wrappers at the store, ready and waiting for you. The one I bought today was about the size of a double headed dildo that I, um, once saw on the internet. Seriously, even I got penis envy from that thing.

I like to hand grate my cucumber. First, I start by holding up the cucumber near the vicinity of my crotch and dancing around a little. My husband made the mistake of walking through the kitchen while I did my seductive cuke dance. I violated him by ramming my cucumber in the middle of his belly, repeatedly, until he left the room. Feel free to dance with your hard cuke as long as you like, or until you lose interest.

After that, I pretend I am a mohel and cut off the end of the cucumber, just the tip, in a covenant with dinner.  Then I take the cucumber firmly in my fist and roll down the plastic wrap and snicker. Finally, I get out the grater, and gripping the cucumber shaft in my hand, I drag the end over and over across it, making a nice pile of shredded cuke. I like to start slowly and then build up speed and then slow down again and then go fast and hard, until you have about a cup or so.  It ain’t rocket science; it’s just a shredded cucumber. No one is going to care if you have a quarter cup too much.

Be sure to squeeze out the extra juice from the shredded cuke before you add it to the Greek yogurt.  Add some minced garlic, a little salt and pepper, and some dried oregano and parsley. Those would be better fresh but I ain’t cooking for the queen. One of my kids won’t even try the shit even though she loves everything in it. Is my family worth the fresh herbs? Not on a school night.  Cover all that mess and stick it back in the refrigerator.  

After all that dancing and shredding and marinating, it’s time for a nap.

When you are ready to eat, have someone else grill the chicken and put out some pita bread along with the sauce. Make one of your kids set the table. Get the other kid to put out the sauce. There bitches, dinner’s ready.

Another easy way to make this meal is to go to any Greek restaurant and pick it up. There is a Greek restaurant on every corner, probably across from the Starbucks.  It’ll probably come with some salad too, or maybe a pickle slice and an olive. Opa!

I am so tired of cooking dinner.

We're Out of the Special

I am ready to go on strike.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking; it's how I show my love.  Lately, though, cooking has become, well, a chore.  It seems every day my husband or my teenager is on a new diet. Add that to my other daughter who is allergic to half of all the food and hates the other half, and you try making one dinner everyone will eat. If these people I live with refuse to agree on some foods in common, then I am going to start just making what I like. And I like some pretty weird stuff.

I remember those Hamburger Helper commercials from when I was a kid. The Helping Hand was cute as hell, but his food sucked.  Who needs all that extra salt and fat, or worse, who needs a box of Hamburger Helper when there is a perfectly good box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  I also remember the Chef Boy R Dee pizza mix, and that was a treat. I suppose that was before Hot Pockets and Totino's Pizza Rolls and Bagel Bites, when people wanted a pizza but had no way to acquire one, hence the need for a shelf stable version.

Yeah, I don't make any of those things for my family. I make them real food, from real ingredients. I shop the perimeter of the store. Generally speaking, I cook from what’s known as scratch, and I do it happily. Only lately, not so much.

My husband, in an effort to lose ten pounds, the same ten pounds he has wanted to lose for years, has decided he is going to low carb it until he reaches his goal. Fine, whatever. The problem is, I don’t eat red meat, not even the other white meat, and I also don’t cook it. He, on the other hand, won’t eat any eggs or tofu, and also hesitates when the main protein is beans. Which leaves us fish and poultry. My teen is on an anti-poultry kick and read somewhere that soy is bad for teenage girls, so she is off tofu and all fake meat products.  My baby girl won’t eat seafood. She also won’t eat eggs, tofu, beans, or red meat, which leaves poultry. So much for a main course everyone will agree on.

OK, there’s always lasagna. Except the teen won’t eat dairy right now because it makes her acne worse. And the baby girl gets heartburn from red sauce.

You try cooking for these people.

Vegetables present a whole other issue. Three of us will eat salad unless I put cheese or beans or carrots on it. One will eat cucumbers if nothing else touches them. Two eat broccoli, one eats squash, and no one wants any more cabbage because I made it too often since I thought it was something they all liked.

Starch? Forget that too. The man is off of starch in any shape or variety. One likes rice or couscous, but won’t eat potatoes, not even the sweet ones. The other one is the opposite.

I keep trying to remind them that Mama ain’t running a meat and three, but it isn't working.

When my husband was growing up, he had to sit at the table until he cleaned his plate. He would sit there for hours, having a staredown with the green beans, seeing who would cave first. My mother played it a little differently. She would make things that no kid in their right mind would want to eat, like fried chicken livers or some sort of chicken fried cube steak, the tough overcooked version. If you didn’t eat it, she didn’t make you sit until it was gone; she made you leave the house. If you weren’t going to eat her nasty cooking, she didn’t want to have to look at the shitty expression on your face, so outside you had to go. Many a night I would sit on the back steps of the house, staring at my dumb dog who wanted to be outside with me on the other side of the glass sliding doors, waiting for the meal to end and the smell to dissipate. Why I never learned to just feed my crappy meal to the dog under the table, I'll never know.

What I mean is, back in the day, you ate what was put in front of you or you went hungry. If you ate at a restaurant, you had what was on the menu or you had a hamburger. There was no such thing as a kids menu.  There was no choice of chicken fingers or a grilled cheese sandwich, nor did everything come with fries. And guess what, my house doesn’t have one either. Now we are so concerned about overeating we don't make kids clean their plates, but we also forgot we aren't short order cooks.

Those people I live with are wearing me out. Don’t make something I love to do into a chore. Just eat the damn food.

My grandfather, Pop-pop, used to tell a joke about three cowboys out on the ranch. One of them had to be responsible for the cooking, and they drew straws to see had to do the chore. The loser told the others he would cook, but if they ever complained, that would be the end. So day in and out, the other two cowboys would go out, herding the cattle, and the loser would stay back and prepare the evening meal. Days turned into weeks, with never a complaint about the food. Finally, the cowboy was tired of it. He waited one day for the other two cowpokes to go out riding, and then he gathered up a bunch of cow patties. He floured them up and fried them in the cast iron skillet, even made a pan gravy, and served them up for dinner that night. They all sat around the campfire, the two cowboys chewing and swallowing but not saying a word. Finally, the cowboy asked, "How's dinner?" and one of the cowboys said, "Tastes like shit, but good!"

That joke is the basis of my cooking philosophy.

I’m thinking about going to a seven meal rotation, you know, meat loaf on Monday, tacos Tuesday, Spaghetti Wednesday, grilled chicken Thursday, and Fish Stick Friday. You don’t like what I make now; just wait until it’s meatloaf every Monday. You’ll be begging for some black bean soup or a lovely tofu stir fry.

Or here’s another idea. Make your own damn dinner.