Three Beautiful Things 01/18/17: Sprucing Up, Crime and Pho, Chickpea Shawarma Stuffed Pita

1. Our apartment home is officially spruced up. I vacuumed, scrubbed down the bathroom, laundered our bedding, and cleaned up the kitchen. What made me the happiest? When I crated the corgis so I could vacuum, they were quiet:  no scream barking, no panic.

2. Back in October of 1989, a unknown assailant kidnapped and murdered 11 year old Jacob Wetterling of St. Joseph, Minnesota. In the podcast, In the Dark, Madeleine Baran, via APM Reports, examines this story over twenty-five years later in a nine episode podcast and then a couple of follow up pieces. You can check it out, here. I listened to the first episode today while doing some of the cleaning around our apartment home and I'll be listening to the entire story, unsettling as it is. On a much lighter note, I also listened to the year's end episode of the podcast Forkful and thoroughly enjoyed Dan Pashman's interview with Chef Charles Phan of San Francisco's restaurant, The Slanted Door, about the deep pleasures, along with some instruction, of eating pho (pronounced fuh -- rhymes with duh 😀).  You can go here and listen to it.

3. You see, a couple days ago I soaked and cooked a mess of chickpeas and now I am devising ways to use them. Today, I made Chickpea Shawarma Stuffed Pita. The best part of this recipe was combining thinly sliced red onion and red pepper with minced garlic, olive oil, cumin, red pepper flakes, allspice, turmeric, coriander (seeds I ground with my mortar and pestle), salt, ginger, and black pepper with a couple of cups of chickpeas and roasting these spicy little globes in the oven for a half an hour. Then it was just a matter of stuffing hummus, some lettuce, feta, and the chickpeas into a pita pocket. I added whole milk plain yogurt to mine. The Deke and I also made this meal work by creating a pita bowl -- we tore up the pita bread into pieces, put them in a bowl, added the chickpeas, hummus, yogurt, and lettuce, stirred it up, and enjoyed the wonderful burst of flavors this way.  Are you interested in looking at this recipe?  Just click here.