Grssk Cooking

To people who know greek letters, people who write "greek" with upper case sigmas to be "cute", it's really annoying. Because, as the title implies, you're actually saying grssk, since sigma is, of course, an "s".

Sorry.

Nerd rant over.

Anyway, Stefano and I took a greek cooking class last week!  My lovely sister had gotten us a gift certificate to a cooking studio near our house as a bridal shower gift, and I set it aside until things calmed down after the wedding.  Then until things calmed down after a summer of hiking and camping.  Then promptly forgot about it until around January.  Then procrastinated because I have a wee bit of social anxiety (ok, the "wee" part is a massive understatement; I refuse to call to order pizza because I hate talking on the phone; I put off making doctor's appointments for MONTHS because I can't make myself pick up the phone or commit to going to see a new doctor).  Anyway, I was worried I'd be too nervous around a group of people and an instructor and not have any fun.

Which was a ridiculous worry, since I had a blast.  It was completely informal, the teacher wasn't a professionally trained cook, and didn't even do the classes as her full-time job.  She was just someone like me who loves to cook and wanted to show other people how.  I definitely knew more than the other people in the class, but that didn't bother me.  It was really fun to cook in a professional kitchen, see other people cook, and make things I've never made (or even had) before, like eggplant!!

My mom has a thing against eggplant, so I've never really had it.  But mixed with lamb, onions, and tomatoes, drowned in bechamel, and baked, it was pretty darn tasty!

Anyway, we learned how to make spanikopita, whipped red pepper feta spread, pita chips, greek salad, moussaka, and baklava.  I'd already made baklava as a kid, and honestly I liked that one better.  The one we made in class was with pistachios and rosewater syrup, rather than the traditional honey and walnut version.

Tasty tasty food.  I put the recipes into an online cookbook on SparkRecipes, and I'm planning on making modified, healthier versions.  But for now, those are the versions we did in class.

Segueing into a related topic, I've been using SparkPeople for tracking my food and workouts.  It's really pretty cool, and for someone like me who needs to obsessively track things and feel accountable, it's really helpful.  SparkRecipes is a complementary site where you can find healthy recipes and calculate nutrition information for your own recipes.  I'm going to start a new project (in my spare time, ha!) where I go through our family recipes (and some others that I make a lot) and figure out nutrition information.  I'll share that here once I get some progress made...

Look, I made a whole blog post without talking about my dog!  Except for this sentence, obviously.