My Fridge is Full of...

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I-N-J-E-R-A!!!!!

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Friday night we treated ourselves to some YUMMY Ethiopian food at Buraka on State Street. We've long since been fans of Ethiopian cuisine (Danny and I often had dates at an Ethiopian restaurant before we were married), so it was a real treat to bring our kids there, one of them coincidentally being ETHIOPIAN! :-)

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Since Ethiopian food is overall a bit spicy (lots of berbere), and is often served with a sourdough flatbread called Injera (used like a tortilla...rip off a piece and pick up your food with it...also a bit tangy), I wasn't sure how the kids would react to it. Turns out...they LOVED it!!! They stole most of my injera and scooped up their doro wat (chicken, carrots and LOTS of spices) like little Ethiopian pros (Luca of course being careful not to get a smidgen of meat into her mouth, the little vegetarian that she is)!

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Luca was especially excited to eat the injera. I asked her if she had that before and she said, "Actually, I had that at my friends' house" (which is what she calls the foster center in Addis where we eventually picked her up). We ordered some extra pieces to bring home and will be starting to perfect our own Ethiopian recipes, but I know we'll be regulars at Buraka from here on out!

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As we spoke with an Ethiopian working at the restaurant, I asked him if he spoke Amharic. He said he does and asked if Luca did too. I said I was wondering if she remembered any and if he would try and speak to her in Amharic. He did, and she looked at him like he was an alien from outer space. (I even knew what he was saying..."what is your name?") He also asked her how old she was in Amharic, and she looked at me and said, "What is he talking like that?!" So suffice it to say, she's a full fledged American girl now! It was kind of sad to see that the Amharic was gone already, but in the end it just isn't practical to think she will hold onto that language in this culture where hardly anyone speaks it, so if it goes fast or if it goes slow, it really makes little difference.

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I wanted to get some pictures at the restaurant, and as I took this one the battery died in my camera, so sorry it's a little dark...you get the picture!

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