Today's menu.

In the midst of planning a move (we signed a lease yesterday for a place in East San Jose; it's huge and y'all can come visit!), preparing for TWO interviews early next week, doing a writing sample for another potential job, and dealing with my expired ATM card, today I am making good on a promise to prepare my friend Steve a birthday dinner (a couple weeks late). I came up with a few menu ideas and he chose the Middle Eastern theme, so I'm cooking up a storm, including a number of recipes I've never made before.

We've got:

• Hummus -- my own recipe, though it came out a bit thick so I may reprocess it later.
  
• Baba ganoush -- eggplant is roasting now.
  
• Gibneh beyda a supposedly Egyptian dip with feta cheese, yogurt, minced herbs, and lemon juice. If Kevin weren't vegan this would totally go in the regular rotation. I used nonfat Greek-style yogurt and regular-fat feta, but I bet you could use reduced-fat feta and it would still be good.
  
• Fattosh (Lebanese-style mixed green salad with toasted/stale pita)
  
• Vegetarian kibbeh -- typically a Lebanese-style stuffed meatball, my cookbook suggests this bulghur-based nut-stuffed dumpling was devised by hungry Christians for Lent. It was surprisingly easy to make, though like many recipes involving stuffed something, I had at least twice as much filling as necessary. Snackable!
  
• Mudarara, a simple rice and lentils dish with browned onions.
  
• Egyptian-style spinach omelet -- the picture just looks so yummy.
  
• Pitas -- I was going to attempt to make some, since flatbread is usually the only bread I make successfully, but I didn't have time to get yeast and decided to just buy some.
  
• Apricot granita -- Steve isn't doing desserts now (one less person for me to force delicious cookies on!), but maybe a fruit slushie? Whatever, we had a ton of the damn things in our share this week and I think I prefer them frozen.

I may post pictures of things later. When I am too lazy to do all the other shit I need to do right now. Ack.