Better than Basketball

Friday night, I made Ethiopian food for dinner. We had decided that we wanted to try to incorporate it into our family since Taye will probably have a special connection to the smells and taste. I took an "Ethiopian food" cooking class and we have tried the recipes that I got there as well as things that I found online. We actually LOVE it! The "wat"-- stew type food is sooo good. Kevin and I went on a date over Christmas break to and Ethiopian restaurant in Indy that was wonderful! http://www.abyssiniarestaurant.com/ I would highly recommend it! I was glad to find the recipes that I have found tasted similar to what they served there. Since the owner is from Ethiopia I guess we can assume that the food is fairly authentic. I got a recipe to make the berbere spice that is used and wasn't sure how close it was to the real deal.
http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/ethiopia/berbere.html
The berbere is a little time consuming to make but it made a lot so you can keep it in your refrigerator and have several meals from it.

The cool thing about the evening was how excited the kids were about dinner that night! They kept saying how good it smelled and actually ate most of their food-- talking about how they can't wait for Taye to be here to eat it with them! This is not the type of food that they would normally like-- a little spicy. I love that they seem to really want to connect with their baby brother!



looking much more excited than in the previous post

Doro Wat (chicken stewed in a red pepper sauce with eggs), Mesir Wat (lentils with the sauce),

Yataklete Kilkil(vegetables with ginger, garlic, and chile)

So you may notice that the food is on a tortilla and we do use silverware. :) I attempted Injera once and it was okay (barely) --then we went to Abyssinia and tasted how delicious their Injera was-- Kevin can't stop talking about how good it is and how perfect it was for scooping up the food and the sauce. In addition, I did not have any teff in the house -- shocking --and hated to bother Janet W. again (thanks Janet). So tortillas will have to do for now but I will try again.:) hmmmm, maybe Williams Sonoma will start selling those large flat stones they use for making the injera and I will get really good at swirling it while we are in ET... or... maybe we could buy extra at the restaurant and freeze it until Target starts carrying it ?! Adoption has been such a journey for our family. There are so many ups and downs - but the chance to have another culture that will actually become part of our family is something I love about this journey!