I had lunch with a friend today. El found some shirrrrrrrrOH! in her freezer she’d forgotten about, and wanted to celebrate. ShirrrrrrrrrOH! is a pasty stuff made from lentils, onions and tomatoes and the mysterious and intriguing berbere spice blend…like Mexican meets Thai by way of Morocco. Anyway, she felt like having a party so invited me for lunch where she made also the Ethiopean version of fajitas, that is, thinly sliced beef with more of the lovely berbere, onions and peppers all sauteed and served with injera (their flatbread, kind of like buckwheat sourdough pancakes) and she plunked it all on a platter in the middle of the table, and taught us how to eat neatly with our right hands (“left hands are nasty,” she said, “you don’t eat with them”) by picking little bits of the injera and using it to scoop up the shirrrrrrrrrrOH! and meat. Yummy stuff and here is it almost 5pm and I’ve got to fix supper for everyone else but am stuffed full (“in Ethiopea it’s rude to leave any food on the platter”, she said, “so you have to eat it all or I’ll be deeply offended and call you a {something unpronounceable} that means Pork Dog.” I asked her if she meant Pig Dog and she said “yes, I don’t know why you say pork and pig for the same thing it makes no sense to me.”)
Anyway, I played with her gorgeous 3 daughters, especially the 4 yr old and the just turned 1 yr old. Ok the 12 yr old is also gorgeous, I meant that I played with the other 2. The 12 yr old is quite grown up and sophisticated and too mature for silly chasing games, but quite the conversationalist. *sigh* girls. It was fun to lay with girls for an afternoon
Then she sent me home with a packet of injera, some shirrrrrrrrrOH! and berbere spices, so I can make a tasty Ethiopean feast for Terry. Naturally it won’t be truly authentic because I’ll probably provide a fork and plate, but it will be filling and delicious and pretty much guarenteed to cause digestive excitement and commentary the next morning.
