Gyro Salads

YUM! Made some awesome dinner tonight! I've been experimenting with this coconut milk kefir I found, it's the only non-dairy non-soy yogurt I have found that doesn't have sugar in it. But it's kinda weird... it's just so liquid-y! Which is what kefir is, it's pretty much drinkable yogurt. But that's still just so weird to me. I don't know that I could ever just drink yogurt... But I'm thinking it might have some applications. Like maybe a little bit poured over some baked apples or pears or peaches or something? Kinda dessert-ish. Mmm that sounds yummy right now. Anyways, moving on to what I actually made today...

So, gyro salads! Kind of. I'm stealing ideas from work :) so at work they make this beef souvlaki and the souvlaki sauce that they make there is AMAZING and by far one of my favorite things ever. However it is made with yogurt and as previously stated I'm stuck with liquid yogurt. Also the souvlaki sauce has white wine in it and no alcohol for this girl! So I blended the beef souvlaki with the beef gyro, using the meat recipe from the beef souvlaki and then some homemade tatziki sauce with the yogurt. And it was delicious. Though I felt like such a snob at the store the other day, make sure I bought only organic free range ground beef. Or they were having a sale on these pork chops that were from a local dairy farm, where they used up their waste products from making cheese to feed the pigs. And so then I REALLY felt like a snob cuz I was like well, I'm really not allowed to eat dairy, so if they are fed dairy will there be dairy in the pork? UGH. I hate being all high maintenance like this. Oh well. Moving on to food!

So for the meat, here goes
1 pound ground beef
1 TBS minced garlic
2 tsp oregano
pinch of salt and pepper

Mix all the spices into the meat. The end. :) Set it aside in the fridge for a few hours to let the flavors marinate, cook it when you are ready to eat!

Homemade tatziki sauce
1 cucumber, diced
2 tsp minced garlic
1 TBS diced fresh dill
1 TBS lemon juice
pinch of salt and pepper
about 3/4 cup (?) coconut milk kefir

Mix all the ingredients together, lessen or add dill to taste since that's a pretty strong spice! Again let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to marinate.

Then when it comes to meal time, it's easy! Brown the meat in a skillet (or you could bake it in the oven, spread it on a sheet tray, throw it in at 350 for about 15 minutes), throw some lettuce on a plate, top with extra veggies of your choice (I threw in some carrots, I'll bet it would also be really good with some radishes and onions), top with some of your meat and then spoon on some of the sauce! Enjoy! It was delicious.
One note though would be to not also slice extra cucumbers on top. I made a salad base just like I would any time, lettuce, spinach, carrots, cucumbers. And then I put the tatziki sauce in which is pretty much all cucumber and went oh.... that's a lot. Not that I don't love cucumbers, but it was a little overwhelming. But still yummy.

Also, on a side note, I must have ate something I wasn't supposed to tonight cuz man I cannot stop farting. I think it was peaches. I had a couple cans of peaches, I was going to make a peach bake again but then got distracted this afternoon. But after dinner while my roommates and I were just sitting on the couch watching the ACMAs I was like man I really want something sweet. So I figured I would just eat a can of peaches, since I wasn't going to use them to make the peach bake. And also I had specifically bought the kind that aren't in syrup they are just in their own juice. Which I'm not supposed to have fruit juice but I figured hey I would just drain and rinse them before I used them for anything. But tonight I just drained the can (not in a colander or anything, just pouring out what I could get) and then just ate them straight from the can and called it good. Less dishes that way. And within 10 minutes I was gassy. It was so sad! I was enjoying a quite nice gas free day until that happened! But this makes me really sad because it might have been the juice but what if it was the peach? What if I'm so sensitive to sugars I can't have any fruits at all? Or only the ones that have hardly any sugar in them, but that means no peaches or apples or watermelon. Which is just depressing! Those are some of my favorites! So I'm really hoping that it's just because there's still inflammation going on since I haven't been on the diet that long, and that after a few weeks of healing I will be able to eat fruit again. Because fruit is delicious and if I am told I can't eat it ever I think I will cry. Actually, not think. Know. I will bawl. Especially with summer coming up when all I want to do is eat cherries and watermelon all day every day. I don't even care that I can't have alcohol or chocolate as long as I can have my fruit! So we shall see how that progresses with how I'm feeling. Next time I want peaches I will definitely rinse them well first! Or just eat fresh ones. Those just aren't in the store yet.