Zatar - Za'atar - Zathar - whatever!!!!

On my recent trip to Baltimore, I was able to visit a Farmer's Market my daughter showed me. One guy had a booth selling spices in bulk. The nice lady meeting the public was surprised that I bought sumac, so she asked what do people do with sumac. I bought it to make my own zatar - a mixture of ground thyme, ground sumac, and toasted sesame seeds and some have salt. The next week I happened to be in Houston and making my usual visit to Droubi's Lebanese store and restaurant and found they sell zatar the way I like it - with a touch of sumac. When I was a kid we kids would pick the wild sumac (we called it Shoemate) and put it on our tongues to taste the sour and laugh at each other's red tongues. Anyway, I bought some and started experimenting with the zatar as I bought it and with varying degrees of additional sumac. According to some writings I've found there is "red zatar" with lots of sumac and "green zatar" with very little sumac. Zatar is the middle east word of a variety of herbs including hyysop, thyme and Lebanese oregano. Our version is thyme. I found that most anything outside desserts can be improved with the use of zatar. The biggest use in Texas is zatar mixed with olive oil and brushed on pita and broiled a short time to bring out the flavor.