Hi, it's Alexa Weibel from New York Times Cooking.
We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes,
and today I'm making my vegetarian mushroom shawarma pitas.
This recipe is just built for efficiency.
You toss your mushrooms and red onion in your spices, throw them in the oven.
By the time they're done, you've chopped your cabbage, and you're ready to assemble.
It feels crazy that this takes just 20 minutes of active time.
It's just delicious.
New York Times Cooking has you covered with easy dishes for busy weeknights.
You can find more at NYTCooking.com.
So it's Saturday in Baghdad, and we're driving east and a little south.
It's supposed to reach 121 degrees today, tomorrow, really for most of the next week.
When I was doing this reporting in Iraq,
we would leave sometimes at 5 a.m. before first light in order just to be able to bear the heat.
Everything is dusty.
And everyone's pretty tired of this level of heat.
As you drove out of Baghdad, there seemed to be no respite to the brownness of it.
We're driving by large stands of dead palm trees with no leaves left, just the trunks standing up.
Along the road, usually, you would see people herding sheep, you'd see quite a few animals,
and what we began to see was carcasses of cows, bloated and covered with flies.