Merry Christmas...in Ethiopia that is

We were so happy to get a break from microwave food in the dusty basement and head to an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate Christmas with the local Ethiopian adoption group. It was a huge turnout with about 100 people this year, up from last year of about 50. We took full advantage of the buffet knowing our eating conditions at home are less than ideal. It was great to see some of the families we had met last year when we were only researching adoption, boy have some of the kiddo's grown!

Exciting and sad news greeted us this week from our agency, first, the exciting news is that there are over a dozen babies that will be referred in the next few weeks. I am waiting with great anticipation to see how far those referrals move us up on the wait list. The very tragic news is that one of the careworkers from our agency was killed in a car accident a few days ago. She leaves a husband and 2 children. Please keep her family in your prayers.

I'll close with a little guy funny, at church this Sunday, we brought him up from communion and the cup server traced the sign of the cross on his head and said "Bless you". Little guy looked at her with a somewhat perplexed look on his face and said back to her "ha choo?"

The wonderful aroma of Ethiopian food.....

At last it was time on Friday for me to try my hand at cooking Ethiopian food. I consider myself a huge novice in this regard as I have only eaten Ethiopian food about 3 times, making it more challenging to figure out what everything is suppose to taste like. The spices and injera came from EthiopianSpices.com , the box smelled so good when it arrived I wanted to put some of the spices in a simmering pot! So with my berbere, shiro, koereima, koseret, wot kimem, turmeric, red lintels, and ground ginger, a huge bag of onions and a vat of oil, I set to work. Hubby came home from work and open the door to the smells of an Ethiopian restaurant. I tried my best to lay out a platter of food on a piece of injera, but ended up with the eggs from the Doro Wat rolling onto the floor before I made it to the table (3 second rule, right?). Our platter had Doro Wat which is a spicy red chicken stew, sega wot which is a red beef stew, kik Wot which is red lintel stew and shiro. I also served some bread with the neter kiba (seasoned butter...jury is still out on the butter, interesting flavor none the less) all was placed on the injera. I have to say, for my first try, I am pretty happy with the results, it all tasted pretty good by my standards. Next time I'll have to talk our friends children from Ethiopia into trying it to get a true sense of how good or bad it really is. Hopefully they will be gentle!