Saving My Greek Experience By Going Asian

Making the decision to not take my skinny for granted has given me more courage to try new things.  New foods, new exercises, new ways of thinking.

I am a closet foodie.  Although my family is originally from California and we never really spent any time in the south, my grandmother cooked like we had lived there all of our lives.

We weren't the traditional fried chicken and greens every Sunday dinner family.  I have never eaten chitterlings or pigs feet.  I have tasted the latter though and I love to watch the process and the smell of my grandmother making hog head cheese.  From her buying the hog head, boiling it, getting all the bones and teeth out - this was a process that amazed me!

My grandmother was always making something different.  Like Farmer John hot dog spaghetti - one of my FAVORITE spaghetti's of all times.  My granny can cook it in 10 minutes flat - never understood how she did it but, man a hot dog with pasta NEVER tasted so good!!

From the different foods we would eat, I developed an adventure for trying something new.  So last week I decided, WE, all of us were going to eat a Greek dinner:  

• Balsalmic Honey Glazed Grilled Lamb Chops with Apricot Mint Jelly
• Couscous with Parmesan cheese and green onions
• Rachal Rays Raosted Vegetables

I am happy to report that we are still alive and there was no upchucking.  My daughter and I LOVED the lamb, I cooked it beautifully.  The apricot mint jelly did wonders for it. I didn't realize how lean of a meat it was.  I also didn't take pictures. 

The roasted green beans were awesomely delicious.  This was my first take on cooking couscous which to my surprise I found out it is a pasta.  It cooks very quickly.  I cooked it in chicken broth or attempted to.  It kind of cooked itself bringing to life an aromatic cloud of green onion and cheese. Boy that thing lived.  Then it proceeded to die a horrible, lumpy, Parmesan and green onion death.

I was devastated.  Before we started eating I gave my kids permission to spit the food out respectfully - the one and ONLY time I will ever do this.  There was much napkin covering of the mouths at my table with that darn couscous. 

I had no idea what to do.  I wasn't about to throw away 2lbs of couscous, that was simply out of the question.  So I called on one of my memories from my granny.  On one occasion my grandmother attempted to make some type of Chinese noodle concoction.  I have no idea what it was supposed to be but what she ended up turning it into was homemade Rice a Roni.  San Francisco aint got nothing on my granny!

But to fix my couscous, I had to take drastic kitchen sink measures.  First I heated the couscous up to help separate it better.  Then I looked in my fridge for vegetables that I needed to get rid of, found them: orange bell pepper, cilantro, three tomatoes on the vine.  I went to slicing, dumping in the veggies with Emeril Lagasse flair - BAM! - while one of my girls continuously stirred and separated that couscous. 

Then I thought, hmmm, how can I turn this up a notch?  MEAT!  I always have a bag of Tyson Grilled Chicken strips in the freezer since changing my eating habits, it's a quick and easy chicken to thaw and throw into anything.

Fingers flying across my iPhone, I looked up some type of dressing to use with couscous and found a basic balsamic honey and Dijon mustard dressing and added my own flair: Asian 5 spice and lemon.  I whisked that sucker together and proceeded to let my salad phoenix rise from Couscous death!

Results:  Both of my girls took to it like it was ice cream.  I gave them the option to add crispy Asian noodles or wantons to it.  They love the crispy noodles with it.  So for the rest of the week this will be my lunch - Phoenix Couscous Chicken Salad with 5 Spice Balsamic Dijon Dressing. 

And - I have pictures.