Amazing food and interactive eating experience!  There are no utensils so you take a rip of injera (spongy, slightly sour pancake-like bread made from Teff Flour) and scoop-up little tastes of everything at your table.  (Family-style.)  The best part is the bottom injera, which soaks up all the flavor and sauces from the items sitting on it.  (The little bowls of lentils, chickpeas, etc are all scooped right onto the injera at your table.)

Ethiopian restaurants do offer meat options however, the lentil and bean dishes are all prepared vegan (without animal products), which is awesome for us!

Great food and awesome restaurant!  Definitely more posts to come on Ethiopian food!  Perhaps even a Christmas Eve meal for us!

Funny clip from the Simpsons on Ethiopian dining:

This one was particularly salient to me today, and I figured I’d share the sentiment:

“Appreciate yourself and honor your soul.”

Thanks, Yogi.  Will do.

Check out the video!  The Proposal

After the camera went off, we dined on some fabulous trapanese with almond basil pesto, and some garlic kale salad.  Yum! (Actually, I’m lying…we attempted, but were both too excited to eat, so we wound up taking it all to go.  Leftovers were awesome, though!)

It was definitely not “gettin’ real in the Whole Foods parking lot” by the time we left there at 10 pm, so we took the liberty of this great photo op.

We made a delicious soup that had a minestrone base and added all sorts of veggies like bok choy, carrots, parsnips, and cauliflower.  We also added some Taro root .  We first tried it raw as we were cutting it up.  Big whoops!  We just got off the phone with Poison Control (who we call after most meals) and apparently Taro root is toxic when consumed raw.  Once it’s cooked it is fine though, so the soup is quite delicious, even if we had a brush with death to make it.

Also, wear gloves when dealing with the raw Taro root as it has the negative effects of fiberglass on the skin.

Delicious soup!  And drink lots of water afterwards to flush the kidneys.  *Thanks Poison Control!

Moral of the story:  Forget making Taro Root salsa thinking you’re one-upping your friend who makes a Jicama Slaw for summer BBQs.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/gifts-for-non-cooks/?ref=opinion

“Cooking gives you control over what you put into your body and it’s cheaper than eating out or taking in. Food you make yourself tastes better, and it’s better for the environment, for your body, for your family. It’s just plain better.”

From the article:

“Big Gifts. These are free, or not, but require a real time commitment.

• A cooking lesson — from you: A truly generous gift. Cooking with someone who spends little or no time in the kitchen is fun and, as teachers know, a learning experience for you, too. (It’s also nice to feel like an expert.) Can you teach someone to cook two dishes you know they like? How wonderful!

• A shopping lesson: For some, shopping is more intimidating than cooking; it’s often more time-consuming as well. Efficiency can be taught and learned, however, and cooking becomes more manageable if you can shop smart. Take a non-cook for a spin around the supermarket (or farmers’ market) and show them how you shop; what your pantry and fridge staples are; what you buy to supplement the basics. Discuss what you plan on doing with all that stuff when you get home.

• Both: Plan a meal; take your non-cook friend to the market; go back home and help cook it. Leave your friend with more food than he or she needs, and leftovers as well. I’ve done this, and it generates the warm, fuzzy thing. Better still, sometimes just seeing it done is enough to put people on the cooking path.

Gift Packs. These cost money; with a good knife, up to around $75 for the first two; the second two are considerably cheaper. The last: up to you.

• Roast chicken pack: A roasting pan, tongs, chef’s knife, instant-read thermometer, butter or oil, rosemary, a whole chicken and a recipe. (You might as well throw in some root vegetables.) A whole bird is a daunting task for a non-cook, but all it really takes to cook is turning on the oven — carving is by far the hardest part. There’s not a lot that’s better than a roast chicken, and if that crisp, buttery skin and juicy meat doesn’t turn a (non-vegetarian) non-cook on to the simple and significant pleasures of cooking, I don’t know what would.

• Stir-fry pack: A wok, spoon, cutting board, chef’s knife, paring knife or vegetable peeler, and the ingredients for a basic stir-fry recipe: If you can cook one stir-fry, you can cook a million. Stir-frying is fast, doesn’t involve a lot of cleanup, and is a simple, appealing concept for beginners.

• Pasta with Butter, Sage and Parmesan Pack: A large pot, colander, microplane, pound of spaghetti, butter, sage, a chunk of Parmesan and a recipe. If I were a cooking missionary, this might be my bible. (A chunk of Parmesan is a great gift in itself.)

• Rice and Beans Pack: A pot with a lid, wooden spoon, rice, dried beans, maybe a chunk of ham or bacon, some spices and a recipe. If you can cook rice you can cook any grain; if you can cook beans as well, you can eat healthily and dirt cheap for the rest of your life. Tremendous gift, no?

• The One-Week Pack: A week’s worth of groceries and a recipe plan for what to do with them is a super-generous gift for somebody who is used to following recipes but doesn’t make a habit of it.

Equipment. Varies in price; most people have a few pots and pans lying around, but if they don’t you might start with a 10- or 12-inch cast-iron or nonstick skillet and a pot big enough for pasta.

• Beyond that. 8- to 10-inch chef’s knife, paring knife, serrated knife:With these three knives you can chop, slice, dice, mince, trim or carve just about anything.

• Plastic cutting board with rubber grips: Nice because they don’t slide around the counter and can go in the dishwasher.

• Vegetable peeler: I like the u-shaped ones, especially the ceramic kind, which are blinding fast. A stocking stuffer?

• Food processor: Not cheap, and not for beginners. But a tool that makes shredding vegetables, chopping meat, making sauces and dips, forming any kind of dough, blending sorbet and a dozen other tasks dead easy.

• Slow cooker: People who don’t cook often say it’s because they don’t have enough time. O.K. Load the slow cooker in the morning and it’ll cook dinner for you.

Some random ideas. Obviously, you can take this in any direction you want, but some thoughts about other gifts:

• A bottle of good olive oil: Slicing a ripe tomato, toasting a piece of good bread, washing some romaine and drizzling any of that with olive oil is, in my book, more like “cooking” than microwaving a pizza. And not only are they delicious, they might lead to better things.

• A spice assortment: I’m reluctant to add this, since these kinds of things decorate the kitchens of many non-cooks. But real cooks use spices.

• Your favorite cookbook: Many cooks have books (or, these days, apps) that inspired them to get into the kitchen. Pass that inspiration along.

• A CSA membership: Community Supported Agriculture programs not only provide local produce, meat and dairy, they strengthen local farmers and food systems, which thankfully appears to be something that more people — experienced, novice and non-cooks alike — are getting into.”

*The recipe called for Almond meal but we substituted Hazelnut meal which added the complexity of the hazelnuts, which we think is superior.

**Review of Soyatoo soy vs. rice whipped cream coming soon!

This is what it looks like immediately after serving: 

We’d recommend making the crust the day before so it has time to cool.  Overall this is a very quick recipe to make.

Dark Chocolate Truffle + Peanut Butter Tart (makes 9 inch tart)  slightly modified recipe from VegNews and Beverly Lynn Bennett

Crust:

3/4 c. brown rice flour

2/3 c. almond meal*

2/3 c. unbleached cane sugar

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1/4 c. arrowroot powder

1/2 c. vegan margarine

Filling:

1  1/4 c. vegan creamer

1  1/2 c. chocolate chips (65% cacao)

1  3oz. dark chocolate bar (roughly chopped) 80% cacao

2 teaspoons of dark rum (Myers’s is our choice).  You can also use vanilla extract.

1/2 c unsweetened peanut butter

Vegan whipped cream

chocolate shavings and/or chopped nuts

Method:

Day 1:  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, almond meal*, sugar cocoa and arrowroot.  Add softened margarine and stir well to form a dough.  (We found we had to microwave the mixture until the margarine just started to melt.)  Into bottom and sides of an ungreased 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, press dough 1-inch deep (we didn’t get to 1-inch.  Make sure you have enough for the ruffled sides of the tart.)  Bake 12 to 14 minutes, or until slightly puffed.  Allow to cool completely on a rack, and then remove the outer ring.)

Day 2:

- In a saucepan over medium heat, bring creamer to a boil.  Remove from heat.  Add remaining ingredients, and stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.  (We needed to do some double-boiler action to make sure it was all melted and smooth.  Add the peanut butter to create a swirl.  (Make sure the PB is room temp, or even a bit warmed so it will blend easily and not be clumpy.)  Cover and chill in refrigerator for 15 mins.

- Pour filling into prepared crust and chill for 1 hour or until firm.  Garnish with vegan whipped cream and your choice of topping.

It was bigger than the blender!  (TWSS!  (It just never gets old!))

I wound up sautéing some mushrooms, shallots, onion, garlic, artichoke hearts, olives, and spinach, boiled some 365 linguine, and thought I had a brilliant idea for the tofu.  Among the post-weekend wreckage in the fridge, I found some kalamata olive tapenade, which I mixed with some olive oil and added to cubed tofu, which I then baked.

In short, the tofu was an epic fail.  It smelled bad, and tasted worse!  It’s a good thing I went with my gut about the smell and didn’t toss it all in with the pasta dish, as that was delicious!

Lesson: Olive tapenade does not a good tofu marinade make.

We may have to change our tagline to “Adventures and MISAdventures in Cookin’s and Eatin’s”.

They should really make that top tank clear or at least translucent.  Oh yeah, it already is!  (see pic)  haha.  I’ve started to put a dishtowel over the Brita while it’s filling as a reminder.

Our friends at Hydros Bottle have done a video to show the speed of Britas: