Chicken Shawarma(ish)

and my unlearning, undoing, and ego-death repair work

Here is a recipe (at the top!!) with modifications for any and all eating styles + tips and notes.

We had friends over for dinner and a leftover greek salad sitting in the fridge. It was 98 degrees outside and I was done. I used what I had to revive the salad- adding more cucumber and tomato, a green bell pepper that I seeded and diced, Kalamata olives that I pitted and halved, handfuls of fresh parsley, feta, and chickpeas (drained and rinsed) that I marinated in an lemony, shalloty, oregano-y vinaigrette that I put together while bullshitting with one of our friends that picked at the dijon and dill potato salad leftovers as she opened a bottle of Prosecco. I harvested some romaine from the garden, washed it, and got it back into the fridge for awhile to cool down before chopping it and adding just before serving. I made some naan which is delightfully easy and comes together start to finish in under two hours with active time being a quarter of that, really, and tzatziki to round it out.

I love summer meals like these ones. The ones that come together quickly, with common-enough ingredients, and pleases a crowd.

Shawarma-Style Marinade

Use this on chicken or pork or skip the dairy to use on fish and/or tofu or even mushrooms. Crispy shawarma-style mushrooms are 10/10.

*Enough for about 3 lbs of boneless chicken pieces

Half of a yellow onion, minced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

4 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp of high-smoke oil such as grapeseed or canola/veg for greasing the grill (DO NOT skip this. The marinade and thus the chicken will stick to shit)

Juice and zest from 1 lemon plus another lemon for serving

1 cup plain yogurt

1 Tbsp kosher salt

Fresh cracked pepper

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp paprika (I had/used smoked but you can use sweet)

1/2 tsp coriander

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Handful of parsley or mint, optional, but recommended

Combine all the ingredients minus the chicken and the extra Tbsp of oil for the grill in a large bowl or 9x13 pan, stirring everything well to combine. Add the chicken or whatever protein you’re using and get in there with your hands to squish the marinade into all the crevices. Chill for at least 2 hours but 4 is best and overnight is even better. Don’t let it go longer than that though or the chicken will start to do a weird ceviche type thing with the acid and enzymes. Leaving you with weird, mealy chicken that nobody wants.

Pull from the fridge 30 minutes before you intend to grill.

Heat your grill on high for 10 minutes and then knock it down to medium-high and oil the grates.

Place the chicken at a diagonal and allow to cook for 4 minutes and then rotate, don’t flip, if you want those sexy grill marks, and let it go for another four minutes.

Do the same thing on the other side once your chicken has cooked for 8 minutes on the first side. Allowing the chicken to cook for another 6-8 minutes on the second side depending on how big your pieces are.

TLDR chicken thighs take about 14-16 minutes total.

Pull from the grill, arranging on a platter in an even layer, not overlapping. Pull off one of those dangling bits, you know the ones, and check for seasoning re: does it need salt

Allow to rest for 10 minutes, decide whether or not you need to sprinkle with salt, squeeze the juice from half of a lemon on top, cutting the rest into thin wedges so folks can add more if they like.

Sprinkle with a handful of chopped parsley or mint.

Voila.

*Skip the yogurt and simply drizzle the marinade on some fish fillets or marinade a bunch of oyster mushrooms, also skipping the yogurt, before getting them on as sheet-pan and onto the grill or dry frying on the stovetop if it isn’t 987 degrees where you are.

**Put beans in your mf salads, I cannot stress this enough. Use it for protein, for texture, to make something heartier, whatever. Treat salads like these as if they were several different components as opposed to one big salad, which it will eventually become. What I mean by this is season things individually as you add them. Chop your cucumbers and salt them in a strainer, letting them sit in the sink for 20 minutes or so. Do the same thing with your tomatoes. Make a vinaigrette and marinate whatever beans you’re using for thirty minutes on their own, and then add the rest of the vinaigrette 10 minutes before serving along with said beans.

As always, taste and then taste again while cooking and/or assembling anything. My food and recipes will rarely ever be You Must Do Exactly X To Get To Z. Things change, tastes change, sometimes I want a big citrus punch and sometimes I don’t. As always, I share what I literally cook and make, in real time. I don’t think this will ever change as I don’t think it could. I can’t produce or write pieces or recipes that don’t feel wholly true to me in the moment.

xxx

Moonie asked me the other day if the shirt I was was wearing was something I would’ve worn when I was 18 (kids really do ask the most random and specific shit) I told her no but I didn’t tell her why and she shrugged and walked away. While we headed out the door I looked over at the mirror hanging in the dining room to see myself in a striped crop-top and instantly I am 18 and lying on my back, stretched out across shit brown, too-long, too-old carpet of a white girl’s living room watching on as her striped crop-top rose to expose her translucent skin, threatening to reveal the barely-there curve of her extra-small tits as she hung fake five dollars bills to dry on a line set close to the ceiling of her Houston apartment.

Her brother’s name was Yancy. I’ll never forget that.

xxx

I am slowly emerging from what has felt like a drowning of all my senses. I experience a 6-8 week energetic downswing that generally lasts for 24-72 hours depending on the size of the recent hole I have dug myself. This last one has lasted longer and was more intense. A month long. More. I choked on words that don’t elicit choking. I cry while kissing Maddox’s hair in the bathtub. I cry telling Anaya about my day but there’s nothing sad. The relentless brain fog despite any and all efforts. This should be some of the best days- post-wedding and honeymoon, post-legislative session, pool days and watermelon stained t-shirts. They have been. They’ve been //and.

xxx

We take the kids to the nearest body of water which is a manmade hole dug into the side of the foothills and it’ll do. Our children are at the age where you can turn your back for a couple beats without disaster striking. It’s odd, that feeling. I still look over my shoulder but I do it less. Maybe not less but with less intrusive thoughts. My mother took me there when I was a kid. I had a pair of thong sandals with the multicolored (airless) balloons tied at the top to create a balloon-bow of sorts. Do you remember those? My mother wouldn’t let me take them off for fear I would cut myself on broken glass in or out of the water and oh my god, it made me so mad at her. I cried and fought and cried some more until I realized that if I kept crying I wouldn’t be able to swim. I stopped crying and begrudgingly stood in the water with my beloved balloon sandals. I was pissed- but I was fine.

xxx

I’ve pushed and resisted but I ultimately knew this was coming.

I am learning to discern and trust. Not one particular human or thing or scenario but as a whole. Specifically on my mind as of late is discerning what is my trauma and what is my ADHD in regards to impulsivity and overriding my own needs and how to better support both. I was socialized to never trust in others or myself. Two years ago I learned that feeling safe and secure can make you feel destabilized when you grew up like I did and I gave space to that, accepted it even, despite the fact it made me feel baseless. The last couple of months have unleashed a gnawing and urge to stop. To be quiet. To turn towards the shadow part of dissociation as a means of survival and be really honest with myself that just because I’ve done the work doesn’t mean I’ve addressed the fucking iceberg sized elephant in the room that is-

Just because you acknowledge something’s existence doesn’t mean you gave it life.

Just because I acknowledged the fact that I have been dissociating as a means of survival for 30+ years doesn’t solve the fact that I have dissociated for 30 years and therefore it’s time that I reckon with that. Not wrestle because the wrestlings been done. Now I’ve got to trust that it’s okay and time to bed that part of me.

xxx

Do you know your cycles? I’m still learning mine and I’m not (only) talking about menstrual cycles. I mean the entirety of you. Every 8 years I have an upheaval and in between, every four years, I have a mini-upheaval similar to what I’m experiencing now. What I’m coming out of now. I certainly haven’t done this while wanting wanting wanting to hold safe my marriage and tend to Anaya’s growth and healing. I have never reckoned while being relational, only as an out. Only as preservation and survival for myself and then my children. The awareness of my cycles are part of my magic and ritual practice that I have been able to take notice of over the last decade. In particular the further I get from existing in a cycle of high-levels of trauma. I still do. You still do. In fact, the more I am able to zoom outside of what is just mine I can clearly see the rest of the world for what it is- both the beauty and the horrors. I feel smaller in the best of ways. If I can give myself stillness I can I can I can

xxx

I haven’t wanted to write. That’s not right. Every time I have sat down to write I have felt hyper-critical and disjointed. It isn’t writers block, it’s almost the opposite. I couldn’t write what I was trying to but absolutely wrote. Like the words were there so clearly and I couldn’t grasp or articulate. This post you’re reading has 6 drafts behind it and that’s how it needed to be for me to get here. I’m learning to simply give myself what I need and what I needed to do was write 6 drafts of a thing and to not judge myself for it.

xxx

When you’re soul is tired, and for my atheists in the room, when you have spent a lifetime performing and/or overriding your needs or were parentified as a child or all of the above, your brain and your body will resist and eventually succumb to its new normal. When you try to disentangle from old behaviors and patterns that you realize now are harmful you will again be met with resistance because you trained your nervous system to live here. It is hard and guttural work. It’s giving The Purge and I’m killing my darlings.

xxx

It’s too hot to bake and yet I want chocolate. First a depression-era chocolate cake that was good but not what I wanted. Then it was my own, older recipe for a flourless chocolate cake (way too fucking sweet??) when what I really wanted was a brownie and I think I knew that but there I was performing again.

Lessons on a real bite-size level of leaning into your intuition.

xxx

Last week, 7 days ago in fact, I decided that it was time to do something about the acknowledging without action and so I am taking action. In an effort to no longer keep dissociation as my main form of protection I first need to learn what it feels like to not disengage or dissociate on a real basic level. In doing so I am not only reprogramming my nervous system but I am also supporting my ADHD, again learning the value in discerning my own behaviors that are a result of trauma vs what are a result of my neurodivergent brain, and where do they intersect. I’m no guru or guide but true to myself and my work I will share with y’all what the process looks like.

Disclaimer: no masters/no gods and I am not a medical professional. My soul-tired is well supported by prescribed medication, therapy, and a robust support system. If you’re grappling with something and need more support please seek the help of a professional whether it is a therapist, doctor, or spiritual guide. Please do feel free to reach out personally if you need guidance or recommendations.

I have deleted all social media apps from my phone with Substack being the exception as I don’t mindlessly scroll here. Be honest with yourself and make decisions based on your truth.

I go for a walk, around the block when the kids are home and longer when they’re not, as soon as we wake up in the morning. Before breakfast or coffee we roll out of bed in our jams, slip on shoes, and go.

My ADHD makes me susceptible to time-holes and tunnel vision which are not conducive to helpful eating patterns during the day. Before coffee I put a food in my mouth- a granola bar, a handful of berries and a cheese stick, a leftover slice of pizza, literally just something before I drink any coffee. This helps my body send more aggressive cues (stomach growling) that I will actually notice in the event that-

I forget to set alarms for breaks. I am getting better at setting an alarm for every hour to just stand up, drink water, and do a body scan. What do I need?

I am sitting in stillness and giving attention to what is needed. Income which is this, my newsletter, and my sex work. No new projects, no book work unless I feel called to write something specifically and feels like a natural flow. No querying agents. No proposal work. Not the zine or ebook I’ve been toying with. No new projects, I said and not even visiting the projects I have in the queue. Stillness.

To piggyback off this and to again allow my nervous system to hush I am writing and reading and painting and cooking not in an effort to monetize but to do what feels good, genuinely good, to me. When you are raised to hustle and hustled for survival for so long the lines get really blurred and it’s hard to actually breathe life into a project, one you might even be excited for, when your brain is go go go go and all urgency. I’m focusing on quality vs quantity. My multitasking might be a superpower sometimes but is a slippery slope.

I’m getting back to basics with my ritual work without and I cannot stress this enough, making it a project. ADHD can oftentimes make us feel all in or all out in really beautiful and also really detrimental ways. I know that when I am committed to my ritual work I am naturally quieter and I am calling that in whenever and how ever I can.

I am journaling (I guess?) though I’ve never considered myself a “journaler” before. This is more or less to really pinpoint my cycles in all the ways, especially as a person with PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) because I know this time of the month will always be particularly challenging and if I’m on a quest to better support myself I absolutely need to support this as well.

I am doing TRE (trauma release exercises) three times a week, sometimes more. I’ll spare you the details but Lex is brilliant and can guide you if you want to learn more.

Who am I if I’m not stuffing myself with ideas and work and projects and doing and doing and doing as a means of disengaging, performative action, and disingenuous creation? Who am I if I let myself actually be still and read just because without furiously scouring for workshop material and/or to generate ideas? Who am I if I actually decided that my performance-kink was all ego and I keep telling that bitch to be quiet?

We’re going to find out.

xxx

I initially put a 30 day timestamp on this which I hesitated to do so because it felt “projecty” but this is helpful for seasons and cycles. If I’m being honest I thought the social media break would feel a lot harder but it has really been refreshing and welcomed. I miss memes and the folks I connect with predominately in those spaces but that’s about it. I have more patience. Being quiet is starting to feel easier but is not easy. I still find myself distracted during a somatic sessions or in general but I’m here. I’m still.

xxx

I don’t know how to write unless it’s in this way. I can’t share my work without sharing it all and informed consent is hot. I’m tired and I’m in a deep state of introspection and undoing. This will impact my work no matter what I do or say, period. While I believe it will ultimately be for the best it will change and I am changing. If you’ve rocked with me since the beginning you already know this about me and I’m grateful you’re here for the then, now, and what’s to come.

I am not on social media which is one of the ways I market this newsletter to attract subscribers and hopefully paid subscribers. If you find value in my work it would mean a lot to me if you shared this or any of my posts that resonated with you with people you think might benefit. As I mentioned several weeks ago I have reduced the paid subscriber cost to $5/month or $50/year in an effort to do exactly what I’m doing and reduce the chatter and pressure. Your support keeps this work alive and that is never lost on me.

PS Evocative: a CNF (virtual) workshop is still happening every Thursday at 11 am MST for an hour-ish. It’s free, accessible, open to all writers, and very queer. If you’d like more information or the Zoom link to join, send me a message or email xx

Biggest love,

AR