Rule #3....and "What Did We Get Ourselves Into?"

The title of this post is what Ryan exclaimed to me at 11:32 this morning. It is the last day of Rule #2 and I awoke at 8am (on a Sunday!) to finish our final great-grandmother meal. When I say "finish" I mean to say that I started cooking this recipe yesterday. Yes, it was a two-day project and I am happy to announce that despite some rough patches, which I will further explain below, the recipe was delish!

I would like to personally thank Erin's great-grandmother for providing us with this treat. Erin volunteered (or was forced) to send me their family recipe for Lebanese Spinach Pies. I made the dough yesterday, and even though we talked about needing to add yeast multiple times, I forgot the yeast. Luckily, this was not a crucial issue, it just explained why I was waiting around for my dough to rise and it never happened. Ryan, being the best boyfriend in all of the world, was in charge of washing all 1.5 KG of spinach. If you are unsure of how much spinach this is let me clarify: it is a GINORMOUS amount (if you still cannot visualize this because you are measurement challenged, like I am, we posted a picture below to help you out). He spent two hours washing it. I am attributing part of that time to him being extremely meticulous because he knowingly did not want to get yelled at by Yours Truly for not doing a good job. I am a bit of a clean cooking Nazi (don't let me get around your mushrooms....). We then mixed the filling in the biggest bowl we owned and I rolled out the dough. I attempted to cut out the dough as directed and failed miserably because their was an issue with shrinkage (when the dough was cut out it would shrink). I then tried to do larger cut outs and ended up with varying sized pies (please see picture below to understand what I mean by varying). I then stuck them in the oven and waited for the aroma to take over the kitchen. And waited. And waited. No aroma. DING DING DING. They are done! Except they were not done as they were still completely raw! I was extremely frustrated and mystified. "There must be something wrong with the recipe!"

Meanwhile, Ryan did not help me cook the spinach pies at all because he was busy fighting a battle, okay, he would like me to scratch the word battle. Let me try this again, Ryan was busy fighting a war! Yes, ants invaded our house in the night. You can blame these amazing scones I made if you like, but regardless of causation, Ryan was very occupied. In fact, he occupied every single one of our burners (pictures below) as he spent all morning pouring boiling water on the ant colony outside our back patio. For now, I think the ants are on the defensive but if they try to pull any funny business I know Ryan will be ready as he is not a person to mess with.

Back to MY story. I started to complain to Ryan about how my Spinach Pies were not cooking and he, being the logical person he is, asked me what temperature the oven was on. I told him I put it at what the recipe instructed, 200 degrees. He laughed. "Zoe, water does not even boil at 200, and you are trying to cook something at that temperature?" "RYAN, I am DOING what the recipe says!" I then showed him the recipe to prove my point and he continued to laugh. The recipe said 200 degrees CELSIUS. So I spent the next few hours cooking the pies at the correct temperature as Ryan made jokes about how I cannot be trusted to hit the moon with a rocket or something ....not quite sure what he was trying to joke about because who in their right mind would EVER trust me to do something involving a rocket and the moon? Yeah, exactly.

Bottom line: I cooked the Lebanese Spinach Pies at the correct temperature, they turned out perfect, I have a full tummy, and we have about 50 extra pies in our fridge and a ton of extra fillings. Life is good. Tomorrow=Rule #3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human being would keep in the pantry. We will explain interpretation tomorrow but for now please see our pictures below.