Coooking for the Greek Feast

Today we had the Greek Feast. I know, I said we would be going out to a Greek restaurant for this one, no long hours in the kitchen cooking, and I was very excited about that! But, since I didn't have to cook a lot for Thanksgiving, and we were going to be able to invite family that usually wouldn't be able to come, I decided to go ahead and do it. This decision meant two things - we had to end the unit a few days early, and we really didn't wrap things up or spend a lot of time on review. I did make sure my kids finished their projects which we were going to display, but that was about it. I was also proud of myself. I'm the stereotypical "I can do it all myself" over committing type of person. I had other people contribute to the meal. I was going to have a scaled down Greek Feast, but as I was preparing for the meal, I replaced the easy stew with Moussaka, because what is a Greek Feast without Moussaka? I also made homemade baklava, because what is a Greek Feast without baklava? Then I saw this recipe for homemade pita bread, and I have never made pita bread before..... then I saw this recipe for an eggplant dip that sounded really easy, and I love eggplant.... so I over commited myself again.

Here's what happened with the pita bread. I had timed it out so that I would make the baklava while the dough was rising for the pita bread. All of this is time sensitive. You can't take too long on either one of them. Mark gets home from hunting and he's in a playful mood. I had made chili for dinner and he's munching in the kitchen and goofing off with the kids. I am the object of this loving goofing off. OK, he's flirting with me. I am a very task oriented person and if it weren't for his measure of silliness in our family, I think we would be a stick in the mud family. However, these are two very serious tasks, and I am quite enjoying myself. Baklava is easier to make than it looks, and it's fun. I usually don't have a large block of time to just cook uninterrupted. However, since Mark came home, I have been very interrupted. I was threatening him, and threatening to banish him out of the kitchen, yet he wasn't taking me seriously. So, done with baklava, on to pita bread. I blame Mark for the next set of events. Can you believe that I forgot to roll out the individual pitas? I just rolled them into balls and stuck them in the oven. When I realized what was happening, I pulled them out and Mark, Mitchell (Mark's dad) and I were squishing them down. I was yelling hurry! Squish! faster! keep squishing! I wouldn't let Mitchell stop. He is such a sweet man, and he would do anything for me. He kept squishing. Mark knew he was in trouble, so he kept squishing. Of course it didn't work. He concedes, I can blame the pitas on him. I had such a fun evening, I didn't mind. Everything else turned out great, though!