switching up taco tuesday

the fun meals in our house continue.  me going through recipes saved throughout the pandemic is pretty much akin to a kid clutching a $5 in a candy store.  kinda funny, kinda ridiculous.
for taco tuesday one week, we decided to switch it up and do mediterranean food.  i wanted to make everything - so i did.  i started with toasting sesame seeds to make tahini (which is crazy easy, by the way) so i could serve up some homemade hummus (which is even easier).

next, i decided to tackle a recipe for pita bread that promised to be easy and foolproof.  i hadn't worked with yeast in a really long time so i was a little apprehensive, but i jumped right in and hoped for the best. activating it is the most intimidating part because the water has to be just the right temperature to work - too-hot water will kill it and you won't know till you leave your dough to rise and it does nothing.  eek.  i mixed it up and got the dough together and set it aside to (hopefully) rise.

after i marinated the meats - chicken and beef - i pulled out the ingredients for the baklava.  assembling it was quite the painstaking process - you have to butter each piece of phyllo dough as you lay it in the pan, layering them ten at a time with the spiced nut mixture in between.  i think this took me the longest to make.

and then...

sigh.

by then the timer i'd set for the dough to rise had gone off - so it basically took me close to an hour to make that baklava.  i hoped it was worth the wait.  and the pita bread dough - well, i definitely hadn't killed the yeast:

i followed the rest of the directions, dividing the dough and patting it into a pita-like shape.  then i preheated my pan on the stove and made my very first pita:

the old lady and her special friend arrived at this point with the yogurt and cucumber i'd requested because at the last minute i decided we needed to have some tzatziki too.  i whipped it up real quick and then we were finally ready to eat.

i gotta say...homemade pita bread is pretty amazing.  warm, soft, chewy - everything you could want in a pita.  never mind that i kind of killed my pan in the process somehow - it looked like some of the dough stuck to it and burned and i could not get it off for the life of me.

it's okay though.  it was totally worth it.  and we're definitely going to redo mediterranean night soon.  repeatedly.