February 2, 2010

Falafel salad


We've all had it happen, you go to the cupboard- nothing there, you wonder over to the fridge, open the door and look in side for what seems half an hour and still nothing decent for dinner. Nic did this little kitchen tour the other night and walked back out, sat on the couch next to me and declared there was nothing in the kitchen for dinner!
Now I knew we were getting pretty low but I was sure I covered every night until the next shop....did I slip up? Deciding to take a look myself I could understand why Nic thought we were to starve this night. All the family staples were gone, no pasta, rice, beans or meat, all that was left was a box of falafel mix I picked up on a whim and thought 'what a good idea'.
For years I have seen the boxed falafel mixes in stores and for years I have never bought it, why? simple.
I use to live right down the road from a cheap as chips falafel kitchen in my 20's and remember eating my way through the shop, stuffing the pita bread within an inch of it's life with falafel and salad (what do you expect a starving apprentice chef to spend her louse pay on?).
Anyway, on a whim I decided to grab a box and keep it in the back of the cupboard until necessary.......I just didn't realise it was going to be needed so soon!

After closely examining the fridge I found a few things for salad so, once the falafel had soaked and I'd whipped up a quick tzatziki, the rest of the dinner came together while I was frying my falafel balls.
I think I have mentioned the kids detest peas, not to mention radish? Have I also explained Alex HATES lettuce?
Well I am not going to tell you that a miracle happened and we all sat around telling mummy how wonderful she is!
No, after a few huge deep sighs on both ends of the table and "Oh, what's this?" or "Yuck, peasssssss, oh mummmmm again?" We all started to eat our dinner.  Max managed to scoff it all down due to his massive appetite lately (peas and half the radish included...one for me!), while Alex stuck his tongue out at everything and after touching the tip of it to every piece of food, simply declared he didn't like it but managed to eat the peas (again one to me!), licked all the tzatziki off the top of the falafel along with the hummus and then asked what was for desert to which I replied- nothing!
I don't know if I'll be having these for dinner again anytime soon but I was really happy with the end result for something that came out of a box and I just added water. I think we all would of felt a lot happier if I'd managed to pull out some fresh pita breads from the oven but alas we were not that lucky- I can tell you that breakfast the next morning was eaten in record time!

2 comments:

Bryan said...

Love the kids reaction... I can't tell you the number of times I have got the "Seriously dad, what did you really make" comment.

Personally I enjoy the cupboard clean out meals. You finally try the stuff that you have been putting off for so long.

TKW said...

My kids hate lettuce, too, and I'm baffled. What is objectionable about lettuce?