Greek Cuisine and Chicken Nuggets

Mixed Heritage

So my Mom's Greek. Well, she's American of course, but her cultural heritage is 100% Greek. Pop's more of the typical Heinz-57 American... with a good chunk of Irish, then a smorgasbord of other blood.

But amway, I grew up with a rather diverse menu. By no means does Mom cook or bake exclusively Greek dishes or pastries. But occasionally she's in the mood for it, and most of it is pretty good stuff. With a few inevitable exceptions. Like I can't stand olives (Greeks LOVE the nasty li'l things) and I never really cared for lamb... even before I realized it was baby meat. Then I REALLY didn't care for it. Of course, I don't really eat any kind of meat any more, aside from poultry and seafood, but I'll get into that later.

Mixed Cuisine

So ever since I started gettin into cookin and bakin, I've also started collecting old family recipes from Mom. And last night I made some Dolamathes, a rice dish made with tomato sauce and the Greek staple of olive oil. It tastes awesome with some sour cream or Greek Yaourti (kind of a cross between sour cream & yogurt). It takes no time at all to throw together and pop in the oven for an hour. It has no protein, though, and I wasn't really in the mood to put a lotta effort into fixin some meat, so I totally ruined the cultural flavor by bakin up some chicken nuggets to go with it. *grin* But hey... cultural flavors were meant to be mixed. I'm proof positive for that fact. A good many Americans are, for that matter.

The recipe makes a LOT, though, so I had leftovers today for lunch (with some more chicken nuggets), and probly have my next 3 or 4 meals covered.

Experiments

Speaking of food fun, a friend of mine is experimenting today with making chocolate shell bowls using inflated balloons, to fill with strawberries and whipped cream. Sounds awesome... mmmmm. However, I now understand that introducing overly hot chocolate to inflated balloons creates a rather spectacular mess ALL over the kitchen.

Gotta love trial and error. *grin*