In Which I Make a Gyros Sandwich

By thunder, I may at age 50 be getting the hang of this cooking thing at last! Ran down to Waukon on an emergency grocery run today, seeing as the forecast for this weekend is for some Fimbul-winter ice storm with umpteen inches of snow.

Got supplies to make more tacos, and yes, this time I did remember to get sour cream. (Note to Jay: I'm an olive freak, so I also got more sliced black olives. ;-) And while I was at it, I also got supplies to make a gyros sandwich.

You read that right, gyros sandwich. Or as my brother calls them, camelburgers. The new supermarket in Waukon is cool, they carry those strips of lamb meat, I got half a pound of them.

And I made me a gyros sandwich for supper this evening. Already have a supply of those giant tortillas, used one in place of pita bread, heated it up in the microwave between damp paper towels, not as thick as pita bread but it worked pretty well. Got the iron frying pan heated up on medium heat, cooked the meat— worked okay, lots of grease, next time I'll probably cook the meat only about 7 minutes instead of 9 minutes, it was just slightly overdone. Chopped up a slice of onion. Chopped up a small tomato. Shredded up some lettuce. And the cucumber sauce, I sort of cheated on that, used some cucumber ranch dressing in place of the yogurt-and-cucumber recipes which look difficult anywhere I see them.

Rolled everything up, I'd guess once again the entire thing weighed in at almost a pound. And it was good! I'm not quite up yet to the standards of the Parthenon, a Greek restaurant on State Street in Madison where I used to order a gyros and fries, $1.62 total, back when I was a college freshman circa 1974. I remember them slicing the meat off a big giant rotating piece of meat with burners flaming behind it, young fellows calling out to one another in Greek, and the family patriarch who dressed in a black suit and looked like an undertaker had his own table where he always sat watching the proceedings of a Saturday night. Those were the days! I'm not quite up to that standard of gyros-hood yet, but I got better than halfway there on my first try. This cooking thing, there may be something to it.

And I've got enough supplies to make several big tacos this weekend, when the winter storm hits.