Memories of days gone by

I often miss living in Chicago simply for the food. I grew up in an Italian/Greek/Irish/Bohemian community and did we ever eat! My Gramps had a double lot for his home and the one whole lot was a great big garden. Gramps used to give me a quarter for every rabbit I shot with the pellet gun. I'd go to the corner market and buy ice cream with the money. Grandma cooked those rabbits with gravy and dumplings my brother fondly called "sinkers". Bohemian flour and egg dumplings, they go great with roasted pork loin.

Those foods I can easily duplicate on the farm. I raise the rabbits and the occasional hog. That's not what I've been craving tho. I have the urge to have a big fat greasy Gyros, true Greek style comfort food with the cucumber sauce and onions. One can simply not find something like that in southern Illinois. So, I hunted down a lamb so I could try to duplicate those fond memories of years gone by....

Alas, my search ends at my Amish neighbors' place. He has a couple sheep on his place. He doesn't eat them, he shears them and uses the sheep as lawn mowers! I bartered him out of a lamb and he delivered it to me this morning. The man looked around my farm and said to me "You don't need a lawn trimmer, why do you want a lamb?" Needless to say, he stuck around for the dispatch of the lamb, he did not believe I was really going to eat it. I hope I did as gentle a job as my Scottish Grandmother did. Anywho, I mixed up my ground lamb with a little deer meat and some fresh herbs I grow in containers in my windows. I just pulled the steaming pan of my concoction out of the oven and sliced myself some. Not quite Petes Gyros on Roosevelt in Cicero, but close enough! I even managed to whip some cucumber sauce up from fresh sour cream I made yesterday. Now I need to learn to make pita bread.....


Ah, the fond memories of childhood and the dreams of eating all those wonderful things again on the farm........


Oh, I almost forgot, the recipes for both the meat and the Gryos cucumber sauce came from Allrecipies.com, it's a great source for good recipes.