Greek Chicken Gyros

Rick, Paul, and I decided to have fun with food and eat a different ethnic food together once a week. This week, it was Greek food as a theme. I found a whole bunch of Greek Gyro recipes and bunched them all together to come up with my own recipe. And man, it was SO good! I felt like I was in Greece again. Sigh...I miss Greece a lot right now. I suppose I will just have to eat this gyro recipe every once in a while to reminisce until we can afford to travel to Greece! :)


What I loved: the tart, creamy tzatziki sauce combined with the starchness of french fries, the crispness of onion, the sweetness of tomatoes, the marinade on the chicken. Yum yum yum!

Ingredients:
Souvlaki Marinade:
*3/4 - 1 cup balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing
*3 tbsp. lemon juice
*spices of your choice: I used Italian seasoning and black pepper. Oregano would be good too, etc.

*4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thawed

Tzatziki sauce:
*1-2 cucumbers (depends on size, I used 2 small ones), mostly peeled (leave a few stripes for decoration), and shredded (best to shred in food processor for quick results)
*1 tsp. kosher salt
*12 oz. Greek plain yogurt
*6-10 oz. sour cream
*1 tbsp. lemon juice
*1/2 tbsp. rice vinegar
*1-3 cloves garlic, minced (depends on how much garlic you like)
*small handful of parsley, finely chopped
*1 green onion, finely chopped
*3-ish tbsp. olive oil
*spices of your choice and salt and pepper to taste


*pita bread (10-12 pieces)
*roma tomatoes, sliced
*red onion, sliced
*crumbled feta cheese
*french fries
*olives (optional)

Directions:
1) Prepare the marinade and place over chicken either in a large plastic sealed bag or in a dish with a cover. Marinade the chicken for at least an hour.
2) Prepare the Tzatziki sauce at least an hour in advance as well: Shred the cucumber and put in a small bowl. Cover the cucumber with 1 tsp. kosher salt and set aside for at least 5 minutes. In another bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Start with just 6 oz. of sour cream and mix everything up. Traditional Tzatziki sauce is a bit tart, but you should still make it your fit your taste buds. The more sour cream you add, the less tart the sauce will be. After mixing with just 6 oz. of sour cream, go back to your cucumber. Squeeze the shredded cucumber to remove all of the excess water. Add the cucumber to the yogurt mixture and mix again. Now, taste the sauce. Is it too tart for you? If so, add more sour cream until it is tart but tasty. When ready and happy with the taste, cover and put in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
3) About 30 minutes before dinner time, cook the fries according to the package directions, and cut/prepare the pita bread (slightly warm it up), the tomatoes, onions, olives, and feta cheese. Cook the chicken on the grill.
4) For a delightful presentation, have separate dishes with all of the toppings (pita bread, red onion, tomato, olives, feta cheese, fries, tzatziki sauce, and chicken) on their own dishes. That way, you can make your gyro the way you want. Enjoy! :)

Comments:
1) In Greece, most of the restaurants put fries in a gyro. It is so incredibly delicious. However, if you don't think fries make a gyro very authentic, you can easily do without them. It will still taste good.

2) If you DO make the fries, you will find that dipping additional fries into the tzatziki sauce is also amazingly good. You won't need boring ketchup at your dinner table!

3) I used chicken in my recipe because even though I don't mind spending money on food, I just can't justify spending tons and tons of money on lamb. In Greece, both chicken and lamb can be used for gyros. The marinade for this chicken helps make it taste more "Greek-like" so I was very happy with the results.

4) When I was in Greece, tzatziki sauce was always served with a large pool of olive oil in the middle. I think that is because Greeks put olive oil on EVERYTHING. So if you want to make an authentic presentation, give that a try!

5) If you don't have rice vinegar, white vinegar should probably work just as well...

5) This recipe made about 12 gyros. And trust me, between the three of us, there were few leftovers. :)

17 day diet

You might have noticed that I haven't been posting new recipes lately. That is because the husband and I are currently participating in the 17 Day Diet plan by Dr. Moreno. I've been wanting to go on a diet for a while, but I have had difficulties finding the Right One. I tried the Yoplait Yogurt diet, which promised that if I had yogurt and fruit for breakfast and lunch and a normal dinner and daily exercise for 2 weeks, I would lose weight and inches. I don't really care for yogurt all that much, maybe once a day I could handle, but I gagged my way through the two weeks anyway. However, despite their promises, I did not lose weight or inches. I don't get it. I eat three meals a day, two of which are yogurt and fruit, and I exercise every day, and nothing happens?!? How lame. So I was pretty annoyed with diets for a while and simply said: "this is what my body is supposed to look like, so there."

It's not like I hate my body shape or anything. I think I look just fine. I eat healthy and I exercise. The way my body looks now is the result. However, even though I try not to let culture tell me I am fat, it still stings occasionally. I find it very difficult to find clothes that fit. Then I get depressed and work even harder on trying to trim down. Then, after a month of trying harder and no results, I get annoyed and say "this is who I am". Then it cycles and cycles every time I try to buy new clothes. The doctors don't help. I got a "lovely" email from my primary doctor a few months ago that simply stated that I was overweight for my height and suggested that I "eat veggies and fruit and water" more often. More often?!? I drink 10-12 bottles of water (16oz each) a day! I eat veggies and fruit multiple times a day! I try as hard as I can to avoid candy, muffins, cupcakes, and anything else that is delicious but fattening! I work out almost every day! I don't drink pop more than once or twice a month. I do like wine a bit much, but I mainly avoid all other alcohol. I hate doctors.

Anyway, I tried to find other diets that I could maybe tolerate. There are so many that are, in my opinion, impossible:
1) Diet plans that are over 30 days long.
*I love cooking too much to suffer for 30 days on a boring sounding diet. Sorry.

2) Diets that are too complicated or gross-sounding:
*Sorry, but I am not interested in "1/4 cup roasted oats with 1 teaspoon of flaxseed oil and a drizzle of agave nectar" for breakfast. Yuck.

3) Diets that are fads and not very healthy:
*I am not going on a grapefruit diet or a caveman diet or anything like that. No way.


So I kept searching and searching for the right diet while eating as healthy as I could in the process. Eventually I found Dr. Moreno's 17 day diet plan. First, it's only 17 days! That's the shortest diet plan (besides the failed yogurt diet) that I have ever found. This was the first thing that grabbed my attention. Also, this diet doesn't restrict too many foods, so it isn't all complicated about measuring oats and agave nectar or whatever. The diet plan combines eating  protein and nutrient-rich foods with probiotic and cleansing foods. The theory is that cleaning out the system will jump-start your metabolism again. You metabolism often gets slowed down by all the clutter and chemicals you digest. Perhaps that's why I can eat healthy almost all of the time and exercise (which I hate so, so much) all of the time and I don't lose any weight. If the theory is correct, perhaps my metabolism will renew itself and things will become peachy-keen. We shall see.

In the meantime, I am on day 13 and I am really, really eager to be done with this diet. I don't mind the foods we eat, it's just that I LOVE cooking so much, and this diet is too simple. All I have been doing for the past few days is looking through healthy cookbooks and writing down all of the recipes I am going to make once this diet is done. You see, we eat plain chicken or fish with steamed veggies for dinner right now. It's so boring. I mean, it tastes fine, but I don't really have to prepare anything. I just put chicken on the George Foreman Grill, and cut up veggies and steam them. *Yawn* I am itching to cook soups, chili, pasta dishes, ANYTHING that takes time and talent. That's probably the only problem I have with this diet. You can't use any sauces or "fun" stuff to make dishes have more taste, so I can't do anything to the chicken. It just sits on my plate, screaming "make a fun salsa to pour on top!" and other such things.

I also am pretty sick of salads. We eat them for lunch every day. Any one who knows me knows that I despise salads. I love eating healthy, but I hate salads. Go figure. Why do I hate salads? I hate lettuce (though I can tolerate romaine and spinach), and I hate how you put liquid on the lettuce and it gets soggy. It makes me gag. But without liquid, the salad is boring and too dry. And that makes me gag too. So I am excited to stop eating salads as well.

Here's an idea of how we have been eating:

Breakfast options:
1) yogurt, fruit, green tea
2) 2 hard boiled eggs, fruit, green tea

Lunch options:
1) salad (with veggies, and either chicken, hard boiled eggs, or tuna), with a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, green tea

Dinner options:
1) chicken, steamed veggies, green tea
2) fish, steamed veggies, green tea

Snack:
1) Kefir smoothies (YUM!)
2) Yogurt and fruit

It's a simple, non-complicated diet. I don't mind drinking that much green tea, either! You also have to drink 8 (8oz) glasses of water a day, but that's not difficult for us. We drink water all of the time. After these 13 days, I am feeling pretty great. I think that I have lost some weight, at the very least, some inches. I have noticed that my clothes fit nicer. In fact, I have been wearing some of my favorites that I haven't worn in a long time due to them shrinking in the wash. It's a nice feeling. We exercise almost everyday as well. I feel happy and energetic most of the time, too. However, it's not all perfect. Besides the salad-gagging and the restlessness for making creative meals, I have found that I have intense cravings for carbs. Sometimes, my energy levels get really low and I think it's because we get energy from carbs. So I am looking forward to adding carbs back into my life.

I think the main lesson that I have gotten from this diet is that Paul and I should eat "plain, boring meals" at least once a week and I am going to try to eat yogurt and fruit for breakfast 3-4 times a week. I like the idea of eating simple and eating probiotic foods daily. I just don't think I can completely change to eating simple. I enjoy cooking and baking too much for that. I am going to try to watch how many carbs we put into our bodies as well. 

Overall, this diet was challenging, but not too challenging that I felt like giving up or I felt miserable. And I am pretty sure that I got results, so that's a plus for the diet. I think we might do this diet again. At the moment, I am ambitiously thinking that we will do this "body cleanse" once every spring and once every fall. We shall see. After all, I have four more days of this diet to do. Then, I promise, I will post more recipes. :)