Spanakopita

In my first ever, entirely non-adoption-related post, I'm going to write about. . . . spanakopita.  Because it's what we had for dinner this evening.  After a recent and deserved admonition from my husband that I might want to be a bit more, shall we say, enthusiastic about meal preparation, I decided to undertake the aforementioned spanakopita. 

Why, you ask?  Because my dear friend, upon being recently diagnosed with celiac disease, emptied her cabinets and refrigerator of all offending foods and brought them to my house.  And I became the owner of two never-opened boxes of phyllo dough. 

So, let me just say--I find working with phyllo dough extremely challenging.  I could not get one single sheet to peel off, untorn.  And my layers looked more and more ragged the longer I worked.  All this was made more difficult by an unwanted phone call--the longest and most ridiculous phone survey of a political nature...local politics, even!  As if I know anything about local politics except how much the city earnings tax annoys me.  All the while my kids are spilling water all over my (carpeted) kitchen floor and I'm up to my elbows in shredded phyllo dough and getting a cramp in my neck and wondering, SERIOUSLY, how many more questions is this gal going to ask me???

 

But THIS was the result. 

And they tasted AMAZING, despite being a bit irregularly shaped.

Want the recipe?  (I made a few minor changes, which will amuse my sister and everyone else who laughs at the recipe reviews in which so many alterations have been made that an entirely new recipe has been invented.)      http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spanikopita/Detail.aspx?prop31=1   Enjoy!