MIDDLE EAST.

neighbors!
when it's monday,
and the avocados aren't ripe enough for guac'ing,
what am i to do?
find another alternative alliterative title that can replace mexican monday,
obviously.
luckily,
my broski over @vegan_magic_time had me feeling very envious
of his sunday shawarma, so much so that i had to get busy getting after it..
uh-huh.
guys,
a good idea is a good idea,
and there's no use in wishing you'd thought of it-
it's just wiser to enjoy the maxxximum activation
that a beneficent bit of inspiration can provide for kitchen wizardry.
i'm into it,
and we got into it,
and that got me out of the swampy dolorous doldrums that day after day of drudgery
at the studio still instills even with all the doo-doo buttery duders displaced.
yikes.
that means i need exxxtra hottness to happen once i'm home.
....which is exactly what happened,
complete with many m'd moniker.
guys,
check the middle-eastern-monday-type teleport:

WORD!
first of all, y'all,
i grilled some onions. blackened on one side,
before i added any oil to the equation, to give 'em the char ahead of the sizzle.
why?
because mjeddrah is dope, and it needs that onion element, or iit's sh!t is weak.
really.
lentils, and farro, and a little GPOP, with black pepper and parsley,
and quartered sweet tomatoes,
complete the look,
replete with heartiness and heartfelt joy in every single bite.
that's expert.
...and i made some pitas.
i did.
like this:
1.25 cups of flour,
1/3 cup warm water,
a dash of salt,
a shake or two of thyme,
cracked black pepper,
a scoop of sour cream,
and a .5 tsp baking pow/soda combo to fluff 'em in place.
i rolled 'em out, and fired 'em up on high heat for a few minutes on each side
how good?
SO good!
and necessary for shoveling tastiness into my big fat mouth.
mmmmmmmmm.
i got the homemade hummus poppin',
with chick peas, lemon, olive oil, tahini, smoked paprika, GPOP,
half-roasted garlic (the outsides had a robust and developed flavor,
this insides of those big cloves retained all the spicy raw garlic flame)
toasted cumin, cayenne, and salt.
it was spicy, and smoky, and no-joke just the thick-lube thing
that that grainy stuff needed to make it's way down the hatch.
...nice!
there's a roasted chick pea salad,
with fresh cilantro and fresher parsley and supercrawnchy red onion and cucumber,
tossed in lemon and olive oil, and drizzled with tahini, too.
too much is the right amount,
and in between loud and hard, there HAS to be some fresh.
rules is rules.
all of that is good stuff,
but i was especially excited to try out the spicy nicey-nice
on some thick cuts of shawarma seitan.
OH MAN!
it's good.
i tossed my proprietary homemade wheat-meat in with all the recommended spices,
inside a lidded glass bowl,
along with some thin slivers of jalapeno, and sweet onion straps an shook it up
until everything was a reddish yellowish wet mess.
that's the key, right?
i simmered the sh!t outta that stuff in olive oil,
along with some HUGE garlic slices,
until all the edges were crispy, and the whole house smelled like a festival.
that's real.
with dill gherkins and lemon, baby kale on the bottom
thick lemony tahini drizzles up top,
and aleppo pepper sprankles to take it to eleven!!!!
i'll never say i don't respect a good meal,
and i couldn't pass on the hankering hunger that i missed out on,
so i did what anybody worth a sh!t would-
i made my own.
*
i really have fallen in love with cooking,
more and more,
deeper, more enduring,
and bigger, better, and more intricately with each passing day.
i think that's just the byproduct of my infinite nature, kids-
i keep adding new things to the list of stuff i want to be good at,
and cutting out whole swaths of fields of disinterest.
focusing on what'd good, and on what makes me better at all of it
has to take priority over fixating on the obstacles in the way of progress.
i don't just want to clearly see the problems,
i want to be able to quickly and efficiently create solutions.
making up recipes is just one small part of that,
but it's a very nourishing one.
everything is a recipe for success or failure, right?
yeah, that's right.
so,
i'm cooking up solutions, literally, and figuratively,
while all of it keeps right on happening,
which, i choose to believe, IS the whole point;
never quiet, never soft.....