Ethiopian Feast

Robert was in town, so I used his arrival as a perfect excuse to try my hand at Ethiopian food, which we both love, especially Doro Wat.

Having never attempted a single Ethiopian dish before, I was a little nervous. I looked at more than one hundred recipes, and here is what I came up with:


For those of you unfamiliar with Ethiopian food (shame on you) the brown tortilla sort of bread is called injera. It is a spongy, slightly sour, bread made mostly of Teff flour. There are lots of places to pick this up in Minneapolis including African grocery stores, the Seward Co-op, and Everret's Foods on 38th and Cedar. It is tasty, even with good old American food.

The bright pink food is a beet and potato salad with a lemon dressing.

To the right, the yellow mush are lentils called Misr Allecha. These were amazing.

To the left of the picture is Chickpea Wat.

All three of these recipes I followed pretty much exactly. They were all good, but the lentils were particularly good.

On the bottom of the picture is Doro Wat. This is my favorite Ethiopian dish and this was my attempt to recreate it, though Robert did a lot of the work. We combined a few recipes to get to what we thought was a good recipe. It ended up being VERY spicy, almost too much. But it was VERY GOOD.

This dinner was great. I will definitely be making more Ethiopian food in the future. It was pretty easy, it just takes some time.

Sunday Dinner

Usually, I make wonderful dinners on Sundays. I had one planned for tonight too, but CJ wasn't very hungry and I decided to save that dinner until later this week. So, I was on my own.

Now, I want to warn all of you. If you are a locavore, organic, or just interested in good health (or good taste) you may not want to read on. You may be disgusted. And for that I'm sorry. But this junk was tasty.

Start with one packet of chili ramen. Cook the noodles according to package directions. Meanwhile, fry a half small container of Spam. In a bowl, place the spice pack from the ramen, a raw egg, and a big squirt of Hoisin.

When the noodles are done, throw them in the bowl to "cook" the egg and mix with the other items, adding the Spam also. Mix it all together and add in some chili flakes.

Here's what you get, total goodness:


I would normally wipe the bowl clean when I take pictures, but what's the point when I'm making ramen with Spam?

The only ramen I've ever had that was better is this same recipe, but with eel instead of the Spam.

Meatless Monday

We have been really bad about Meatless Monday. Actually, I've been very bad at getting proper meals on the table at all. But it is now fall, and I love cooking this time of year. So, I'm going to start to try and get back into Meatless Mondays, starting today (which is Meatless Wednesday.)

Tonight I made what I've been craving for weeks: Beer Cheese Soup.

I started with this recipe and changed it more to my liking. CJ hates celery, so that was eliminated. I used vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. I used Guinness because I like dark beer flavors best. We topped with the "traditional" popcorn instead of bacon, though I think bacon would be very good.


It isn't exactly what you would get in a Wisconsin bar, but it was good. Next time I think I would remove the vegetables all together or blend it. The chunks were kind of distracting, but I think they added good flavor. I think I would try it with a real hoppy beer like a Surly Furious for a different beer taste, and I would add more beer.

Overall, it satisfied the craving and was an excellent vegetarian meal. CJ didn't even complain, like he often does on Meatless Mondays.