Cooking today

I have to do some cooking this morning, primarily making some cupcakes for my mother's birthday. But, when it's summer in Texas, IF you have to turn on the oven, you know you better make it worthwhile and cook more than just one thing! That's a good energy-saving tip for year round, actually. Try to combine your cooking so that you don't just have one casserole in the oven. Go ahead and make some muffins or a cake while you are at it, or roast some veggies for later in the week. The only thing you've got to think about is the temperature it will cook at. Most baked goods you can lower the temperature and just cook it longer, but roasted veggies don't really get all roasty unless the temp is at least 350 degrees. This is all my opinion and from my experience, of course. But it has served me well so far and I continue to experiment!

Anyway, today I am making the cupcakes, and so I took a look around my kitchen to see what else I could make. In my fridge I had 2 zucchini and 2 cucumbers, some leftover sour cream and some yogurt, and my pantry held a can of chickpeas which recalled the tahini in the back of my fridge. All those ingredients sounded pretty Greek to me (lol), and I remembered thumbing through a Mediterranean cookbook at Border's the other day and a picture of some Greek zucchini patties looked pretty darn good. I googled until I found a similar recipe and now Greek food is going to form the basis of my lunches next week. One of the cucumbers will make some tzaztziki sauce, the chickpeas and tahini for hummus, and I just need to pick up some pitas and some tabouli.

I'm hungry just thinking about it all, so I am headed to the kitchen to start!