Soccer Madness

This fall, Jackson and Olivia are both playing soccer. This means practice four nights a week, and two games every Saturday. It is a lifestyle.

While watching Jackson practice, Olivia and her friends got into the water jug and did some impromptu hairstyling. It was 90 degrees so I figured, that's one way to keep cool.

I am all about trying to get as much protein and veggies into these kids as possible. Their little bodies work very hard. For dinner I made a couple of recipes from Teff Love that complimented each other well. Ye'shimbra Duket Kita (savory chickpea flour pancakes) and Ye'tofu enkulal firfir (spicy tofu scramble.) I doused the whole thing with hot sauce and it was delicious.

Homework

Our kindergartener Olivia is getting her first taste of homework, and she is not a fan. She can be very dramatic about the small amount of homework she is asked to do each day. For example, one day she was asked to write a sentence about what she did over the weekend. This took about 20 minutes and at one point she dramatically threw her arms up, laid her head down and declared that it was taking forrrevvvverrrr.

I made a little Ethiopian feast for dinner, to bolster her spirits and give her the energy she needed to go on. The kids enjoy Ethiopian food because they are allowed to eat it with their fingers. From Teff Love, I made the Ye'misser Wot (red lentils) and the Fasolia Be'Karot (green beans with carrots), along with some injera I had in the freezer from last time I cooked Ethiopian.

Monster waits patiently for injera scraps.

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.