Stormy Memorial Day

Since heavy thunderstorms were forecasted for Memorial Day, the grill stayed covered. Instead, I made an Ethiopian Feast, using the newest cookbook in my collection, Kittee Berns' Teff Love.

I began the day before, making the ye'qimem zeyet (seasoned oil) and berbere (seasoning blend) that are used in most of the recipes.

The book contains so many Ethiopian recipes I'd never come across before. But to start off, I went with the familiar dishes I typically eat at Aster's. First up, spicy ye'misser wot (red lentils).

A milder protein for the kids was this ye'ater kik alicha (yellow split peas.)

Ye'atakilt alicha (cabbage, potatoes, and carrots) elevates simple cabbage to something I can't get enough of!

I gotta have my ye'abesha gomen (garlicky collard greens.)

Ye'bamya alicha (okra and tomato) was new to me, but I love okra. It was delicious.

I was glad to find a recipe for timatim fitfit, a spicy tomato salad made with crumbled bits of spongy injera bread. I made mine super spicy and used it as a condiment for the dishes with less heat.

Kittee's book offers dessert suggestions as well, like teff snickerdoodles and mocha teff brownies. However, I didn't actually have any teff flour on hand, since I bought my injera bread from Aster's. I have made my own injera once before, but I didn't want to mess with it this time since I was making all the other stuff.

Anyway, instead of making an Ethiopian dessert, I went with the Sweet Potato Chocolate Cake from Plant-Powered Families, mostly because I've been dying to try it. An entire huge sweet potato went into this cake and its frosting. Crazy talk you say? No. Amazing, fudgey, brownie-like cake topped with a rich, Nutella-consistency frosting. This went quickly!

The storms were kind enough to wait until after we had finished feasting, but they did come eventually.

Our backyard turned into a pond. We had a tornado warning and had to put the bike helmets on the kids and shelter in our first-floor bathroom for a bit. Luckily, we did not actually get a tornado.

Freaky strong storms, and a cake made from sweet potatoes. A memorable Memorial Day.

Ethiopian At Home

After a recent excursion to Aster's, I decided it had been far too long since I prepared a homemade Ethiopian feast. So I spent a leisurely Sunday afternoon in the kitchen.

First I made niter kibbeh, a spiced oil blend. Watching it simmer on the stove with all those vibrant colors, you just know it's going to add great flavor to your dishes.

Clockwise from top left: gomen wat (collard greens), atakilt wat (cabbage stew), mesir wat (spicy red lentils), and but'echa. The but'echa recipe came from Vegan Eats World. I was so excited to see a recipe for this dish, made from chickpea flour. I had only eaten it once before, at an Ethiopian restaurant in Montreal. It was like a thick hummus with a strong garlic flavor. This version of but'echa turned out quite different. It was more like scrambled eggs! We still enjoyed it even though it wasn't what I was expecting.

Random thing I learned when I set out to make my own injera bread: Austin is experiencing a teff flour shortage! In the past, it was easy to find at the health food stores. Now, according to a guy at Whole Foods, they're having trouble sourcing it. You can still get the teff grains, but they're so hard and tiny, there's no way my cheapo food processor would be able to grind them into flour. Fortunately, I was able to buy a big bag of readymade injera from an Ethiopian restaurant near my house.

I frequently post pics of Jackson or Olivia enjoying food, but rarely Tony. He eats, too.

Jackson is all about zombies these days. Today he created a zombie repellant for our backyard.

Did you know zombies are allergic to black pepper? He also rubbed his bare feet on the rock, explaining that the "stink" would drive the creatures away. (He may have a point there. Oh, how I miss the days when his feet had that sweet baby smell!) The device seems to work -- no zombie invasions to report.

Vegan MoFo Day 12: Ethiopian, Heck Yeah!

This weekend we treated ourselves to Ethiopian food at Aster's. Some friends have been surprised when I say that Jackson and Olivia love Ethiopian food. Although I don't cook this cuisine at home often (I think I've made it a grand total of one time -- that needs to change!), the ingredients are quite familiar to my kids...lentils, potatoes, greens, bread. They both love lentils. And of course they love a chance to eat an entire meal with their fingers! So when I asked Jackson if he wanted to go eat Ethiopian food, his response was, "Heck yeah I do!"

While we waited for our meals to arrive, our server thoughtfully brought out little dishes of alicha miser (mild lentils), potatoes, and injera (the spongy bread used to scoop up the food) for the kids, so they didn't have to wait.

Soon the rest of our food arrived. We ordered two vegetarian samplers, and everything arrived on a giant platter. What a feast! The sampler included fasolia wat (mixed veggies in a cinnamon sauce), gomen (collard greens), alicha miser (mild lentils), keyi miser (spicy lentils, my favorite), atakelt wat (cabbage, green beans and carrots in turmeric sauce), potatoes, and timatim fitfit (spicy mixture of mashed injera bread, jalapenos and onions).

Another view of the spread, from Jackson's viewpoint.

After eating our fill, we were off to Cabela's so Tony could pick up some camping gear. Jackson and Olivia were more interested in the boats.

Playing camping...hopefully we'll do some of the real thing this fall.

The aquarium is a welcome change from the rest of the store because it features live fish rather than taxidermied woodland creatures.

Tony has so much love for giant catfish.

Then we made one more stop at the health food store to pick up a few staples. I also treated myself to some snacks: cranberry kombucha and Hail Merry macaroons...

...honeycrisp apples a.k.a. the best apples...

...and pistachios. Wonderful pistachios, indeed.

Hope you had a good weekend!

Weekend Eats and Treats

The weekend is almost here but, before I forget, we had some great food last weekend! 

Friday night, it was just me and the kiddos. I made a quick pasta with basil pesto and cherry tomatoes. The garden has been going crazy with all the rain we've had this summer, it's wonderful! I made a big batch of pesto and froze it in ice cube trays, so I can pop out the amount I need. I topped the fettucine with a few shreds of pecorino romano cheese. Pecorino romano is so salty and has such a big flavor -- it's great if you're trying to watch your fat intake but want the richness of cheese, because you only need a tiny bit.

We got our grocery shopping done, then we stopped by the Capital City Bakery trailer for cupcakes. The kids had vanilla with sprinkles, and I had a black forest cupcake -- chocolate cake topped with whipped cream and cherries. Delicious, vegan cupcakes -- a perfect little treat after a week of eating light.

Saturday morning, we had to drop off Tony's car for some maintenance. While we waited to pick it up, we had brunch at Kerbey Lane. I ordered the vegan breakfast platter, which came with raspberry pancakes, tofu scramble, and vegan sausage patties. The tofu scramble was spicy and came covered in chopped tomato and scallions. The pancakes, although they didn't really taste like raspberry or have any visible raspberry pieces in them, were fine. The sausage patties were overcooked, hard and chewy. This has happened before, so I will probably find something else to order next time I eat breakfast there.

Tony ordered the migas. I may try them some time, so I thought I would take a picture. I've never been much of an egg eater, but the urge does strike me once or twice a year. He enjoyed these.

That afternoon, a couple of my friends were running a craft booth at the North Austin Trailer Yard, so we stopped by for a visit. While we were there, we checked out a trailer food competition, part of the Go Texan Restaurant Roundup. Each of the food trailers on the lot was offering free samples of a special dish made from local ingredients. You could try them all and vote on your favorite dish.

 

We were still pretty full from breakfast, so we only got one sample, but it was quite a sample. It was actually a full-sized pecan pie sundae from The Yogurt Experience, made with Texas pecans. It took a lot of restraint to just take one bite and allow Jackson and Olivia to finish off the rest -- it was so good! They loved it. Now I know where to take them next time they deserve a Friday night treat!

On Sunday, I cooked a sort of multicultural dinner. I made a couple of Ethiopian dishes from Appetite for Reduction -- Y'abesha Gomen (gingery collard greens) and Mushroom Tibs. I rounded out the meal with curried lentils and garlic naan bread. A light and healthy meal to make up for the weekend's excesses, but also a spicy and satisfying feast!

More Meals I Didn't Cook

Recently posted a few brief restaurant reviews... and now I have a couple more. I think it's the heat...when it's 107 degrees outside, you stay holed up indoors all day. When mealtime rolls around, you feel a little cabin feverish, and you definitely don't want to turn on the oven. So naturally, you start thinking of your restaurant options...

 One day we took the kids to eat Ethiopian food at Aster's. I've never shied away from exposing Jackson and Olivia to the different types of ethnic cuisine that I love. How else are they going to get a taste for it? For me, the key has been finding a way to familiarize the food for them. For example, Jackson likes it when I make lentil soup. The Ethiopian buffet had a couple different types of lentil stews. I chose the mildly spiced one, and served it to him in a bowl, over rice.

Little man loved it! He made the connection to something he'd eaten before and enjoyed, so he wasn't hesitant about digging in.

With Olivia, we give her something she likes, such as rice, and add a few other new things that are fun to eat with her fingers, such as potato stew and injera bread.

Aster's offers a buffet during lunch hours, which makes it super easy to give the kids the specific foods they like best. It also makes it easy for me to load up on my favorites -- lentils and greens!

Although Aster's does serve meat, all of their non-meat dishes are made completely vegan. I double checked with the waitress because the buffet items weren't clearly labeled as to which were vegetarian or vegan. She assured me that they use no butter, dairy, or meat-based broths in their veggie dishes. She added that most of the items are also gluten-free.

Another day, we were up at IKEA pricing beds (Olivia's outgrowing her crib), and we stopped to eat at a Greek restaurant named Zorba.

We chose it mostly because of the name. You see, for many years, I adored a Greek restaurant in Oklahoma City called Zorba's.  I thought, "Hey, similar name, maybe the food is similarly AWESOME, too?"

It wasn't quite as good as "my" Zorba's (But how could it be, you know? Because of the nostalgia?) but it was definitely the best Greek food I've had in Austin (well, OK, it's in Round Rock.)

Of course we got some hummus.

You gotta have the sprinkling of paprika and the dribble of olive oil and single kalamata olive. You just do.

I ordered the vegetarian sampler, where you pick five items. I chose tabouli, lentil soup, baba ganoush, spanakopita, and falafel.

The tabouli was one of the best I've ever had.  The lentil soup was delicious, and not something you can get at every Greek restaurant. You get bonus points, Zorba, for having a soup option. I'm pretty sure the spanakopita was baked, rather than fried. Healthy points, there. The baba ganoush was creamy and rich. The falafel was served with (non-vegan) tzatziki sauce, and it was more like a chewy little veggie patty, than your typical crumbly falafel ball. But it was good in its own way.

Zorba was exactly what I needed after the exhausting experience that IKEA always provides. Even though it's out of the way, I'll definitely go back next time I need my Greek fix.

Home

We're home.

Soon I'll make a post about our 1800-mile road trip from Poughkeepsie to Austin, our week living in a Residence Inn, and my obscenity-laced dealings with extortionist Russian Mafia auto shippers. But for now, I just want to send a huge thank you to all of you who wished me luck with my move and expressed concern about whether the Texas wildfires have affected me (thankfully, they have not.) Thank you. It feels great to be settled. It feels great to be home.

Tony's previous employer wouldn't let him take time off work to fly out here and look for housing before we moved, so we had to wing it and find a house to rent once we arrived in Austin. Every morning, I would hop on the shared computer at the hotel and check the listings, and then we would drive around and scope places out. Each day I grew more nervous because houses were being rented out so quickly. We would see a place that we liked, and call the realtor, only to discover it was already taken. This happened five or six times. We couldn't increase our budget and we were determined to get a house, not an apartment. Tony and I had never lived in a house together, and it was time. The kids need a yard to run around in. I need a washer and dryer that belong to me and only me.

At the last possible minute, (the movers were literally heading into town with our stuff and needed somewhere to put it) we found a home that had just come onto the market that morning.

Our home.

The inside is pretty basic because we haven't really decorated yet. I like that we have a fireplace (believe it or not, it does occasionally get cool enough in Austin to warrant using a fireplace), and a garage so my car doesn't have to bake in the sun all day.

And oh yes, look what else is in that garage.

Sniff, sniff, aren't they beautiful? I'm so proud.

The house is only a few minutes from Tony's new job, which is awesome for him. There is also a greenbelt that is accessible at the end of our block -- I've already done a little exploring with Jackson. But the main reason we love this house is the backyard.

Jackson and Olivia love it. All they've known for so long is cold and snow, and apartment living with no space of their own. Sometimes Jackson will just sit in a deck chair and relax in the shade, looking out at the trees. My little guy, who is usually such a tornado of energy, will sit there quietly for a good twenty minutes. It's like he turns into a tiny old man. Then he gets another burst of energy and wants to run around and feel the sun on his face.

Olivia is a big fan of the deck. She is more like her daddy, preferring to hang out in the shade where it's cooler.

I like my new kitchen, too, although it's too overcast outside to take good photos today. It has a pantry, and a gas stove which I'm still getting used to, and window over the sink so I can look outside while I wash dishes. I also have a bookshelf for my cookbooks, so I don't have to store them in a cupboard. Now I can show 'em off.

The other night, I made an Ethiopian feast in honor of Tony's first day at his new job. All of the recipes were from Appetite for Reduction. I can't believe I almost didn't buy that cookbook, thinking it was "diet food." Everything is so delicious.

Y'abesha gomen - gingery collard greens. These were so crazy good that I finished them off for breakfast the next morning. Cold. I might be a freak for being so addicted to greens, but I don't care.

Ethiopian millet. If you haven't tried millet, it's similar to couscous, but with a little more bite to it.

Mushroom tibs. This dish was so easy to make. You whisk a spicy tomato sauce together in a measuring cup, dump it over the mushrooms, and stick it in the oven for 20 minutes. The recipe doesn't call for chickpeas, but I figured the sauce would complement them, so I tossed in half a can. If your store doesn't carry cremini mushrooms, don't worry, just use white button mushrooms. I almost always use button mushrooms wherever cremini are called for, since they are easier to find and cost less.

I'll be back soon, but a kind neighbor just stopped by to school us on recycling and trash pick-up schedules. I had put out our blue recycling bin along with the regular trash, but apparently it only gets picked up every other week.  I'm pretty pumped that we have single-sort recycling here -- it is really convenient and we didn't have any type of recycling available at all where we used to live. But now I have to run to Home Depot to buy a special kind of bag to use for lawn clippings. Who knew there were special bags? Ah, it's good to be home.