Healthy Moussaka

Sorry for the lack of blog posts last week :(

This past week on the Food Network, we caught part of an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives with Guy Fieri, and he visited a Greek restaurant that had delicious looking foods, one of which was Moussaka. Moussaka is akin to a vegetable lasagna, but it has no noodles in it, just layers of (usually) eggplant, and sometimes zucchini, with a spiced meat sauce, topped with a bechamel (butter, flour, milk, and cheese), and then baked to golden brown perfection.

We knew that we had to try to make it, but we wanted to make sure that the topping was not as unhealthy as the one on tv was (because they used a lot more butter than I would want to to keep my calorie intake low). We also used ground turkey instead of beef or lamb, which kept it lean as well.

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Brined Cornish Hens

Sorry this post is so late :( With my week starting a day late, I didn’t really know what day it was, and we got a little sidetracked. That being said, we didn’t forget this week’s post completely, so have some belated enjoyment!

For Christmas, we had the Burns family over to the apartment. Wanting to shy away from a traditional Christmas dinner, we decided to make Greek-style Cornish Hens. This was good for a few reasons, each Cornish Hen was enough meat for a single person, and everyone seemed to enjoy them. The recipe does need some prep work, as you will need to brine the Cornish hens beforehand. Also, when buying the hens, make sure to buy the ones without the giblets, otherwise you’ll need to remove them yourself and that’s a pain.

About to enjoy food! Image thanks to Jess' phone :)

Tiny chickens, ahoy!

Lamb Meatballs

For Christmas two years ago (2009), my Mom gave Ashley and I a small book with Greek music and food recipes.

One of them is called Keftedes, which are meatballs made from lamb. They are, simply put, the best meatballs I have ever had. They easily beat out the turkey meatballs we usually make. The lemon sauce in the book was not great (it was mostly olive oil) but the meatballs themselves were amazing. The juicy, tender lamb combined with some Greek flavorings (lemon, oregano, caraway, cumin) made for a wonderfully refreshing meal that reminded me of the start of spring.

Unfortunately it is not quite spring [and in Delaware it is in fact quite snowy :( ], however if you fry up some of these meatballs you might believe time has skipped ahead three or four months.

Enough talk, more meat!

Tanukis

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Yes, you read that right. Tanuki Week in our household. Recipes to follow.

Note: Tanukis are weird Japanese raccoon-dog animals that can’t be explained in any logical way. The reason it is Tanuki Week is because we made gyros, which requires tzatziki sauce, which Cory claims is really called Tanuki sauce. Since we had to make quite a bit, I have been creative with this week’s recipes to incorporate the sauce into them. Gyros, Lasagna Rolls, and most recently, Gyro Burgers! Will update in a few days with recipes for these things :)
Read the Recipes!