First attempt at Ethiopian cooking...du du duuuhhhhhhhh

Ok so this post is really late, I actually attempted my first Ethiopian dinner the first week of August.  I know, I know, I'm a terrible blogger.  I've been wanting to have my neighbors over for an authentic Ethiopian dinner to thank them for all their help while Chris has been gone.  So I needed some guinea pigs first.  In comes the Wulczynski family!

Joe and Stacy, their daughter Tessa and new baby Lillian....Lillian didn't eat of course!  I love how Betsy's under the table looking right at the camera ha!
Let's start at the beginning.  First we have some semi-exotic spices along with everyday items.  I say "semi" because I couldn't find them anywhere! I finally found them in Florence at a Middle Eastern market. 

These are just the spices I used to make the Niter Kebbeh (or Nitr Q'eb or a variety of other ways to spell it).  This is basically just spiced butter.  I used 1lb of butter and all the spices and simmered for about an hour.

After it was done simmering and the butter was fully infused with the flavor of the spices, I strained it through cheesecloth three times.  There are no pictures of this step because, well, it's messy and takes at least two hands (I could have used more!). 

So the next day was the big cooking day.  I had many more spices and such to use for the two dishes I would be making.  (sorry no picture) I made Doro Wat and Misr Allecha.  Doro (chicken) Wat (stew) is a very common dish (for those who can afford the meat).  It's main spice is Berbere which is a hot spicy blend of several spices.  My little bro and his wife got me some from a Somalian market around the corner from their house.  I've seen recipes to make your own but I'd rather get it from someone who really knows! I think one of it's main ingredients is some type of paprika.  Traditionally, Doro Wat is also served with a peeled hard boiled egg that's been soaking up the sauce.  One egg per person.  I omitted this ingredient because I find it odd and I've never eaten the egg before when I ordered it at a restaurant. 

One of the steps for the Doro Wat was difficult but fun.  I had to use a mortar and pestle to break up the cardamom seeds.

Funny story....I was standing on my kitchen stool the other day looking at my spices and waaay in the back I found an unopened jar of McCormick ground cardamom!! I have no idea where, when or why I bought it.  I searched all three stores here and couldn't find it so maybe I got it at the commissary in Germany??? (3 years ago?)  Oh well, it will be easier to make Chai!

Back to my Doro Wat....I had to use a lot of onions, I cry pretty bad when dealing with onions but I used my Pampered Chef chopping thingy and that seemed to help. You put the onions into an empty pot and let them simmer without burning or adding water, phew! Then you add a lot of spices and finally some water, then the chicken and let it simmer for a while.  This is what you get when you're done...

The recipe I had called for a whole chicken so I bought one that was already cut up.  However, since it did not simmer all day, the chicken was not falling off the bone and we had to use a fork to get it off.  Next time I'll use chicken breasts and chop it up so we can just pick it up with our Injera. I was afraid it would be too spicy but as soon as Tessa (5) tasted it, she said "oh yeah, that's a winner!" and gave me the thumbs up. :D

As you can see I had an injera on everyone's plate since I don't have a pan big enough to make injera in to serve the entire dinner on. 

On to the Misr Allecha.  It's a lentil mash of sorts and one of my favorites.  I searched all over the internet and only found this one recipe.  Well, it kinda tasted like feet.  Joe and Stacy enjoyed it but it wasn't too good to me, probably because I know what it's supposed to taste like.  This dish gets it's yellow coloring from the turmeric (which smells like feet).  I'm going to try to find this recipe in a cookbook and hopefully it will be better! Maybe just less turmeric next time? It was only 1/2 tsp to begin with!!

The little green bits are finely chopped jalapeno peppers.  I didn't do too good with the "finely" part. 

This past Sunday I attended an Ethiopian cooking class down in Springfield.  It wasn't quite like the cooking classes I took in Germany where they make everything in front of you then you have a few bites.  She made injera, the onions for the doro wat and then a dip kind of thing, like an Ethiopian hummus, then they brought out plates with about 6 different dishes on it that she made the day before.  We were able to ask her questions about how to make different recipes or different techniques, which was helpful.  One fun thing, the first step in the Doro Wat recipe she gave us is "kill the chicken and prepare it for cooking" HA!!  I was able to purchase a spice blend for the hummus thing made by an Ethiopian woman in Ethiopia. ;)

I'm very excited about being able to finally make my neighbors dinner and have confidence that it will taste good.  There are a few things I did learn while making this meal:

1. Use cut up chicken so utensils aren't needed.
2. When seeding and chopping the jalapeno peppers, use gloves.  Two hours later, even after multiple hand washings, your mouth will burn if you put your finger in it.
3. Do not look over the pot when adding the berbere and paprika, you will choke. 
4. Always look all the way into your spice cabinet before going through the effort of grinding your own spices.
5. If a spice smells like feet, it will make the food taste like feet.

Making Injera!!!

Well we've been on the waiting list since April 7th.  I got an email about a month later to say that our dossier was in Ethiopia.  It took about four emails back and forth (asking the same question every time) to discover that we had been on the waiting list for a month already!  I was greatly mistaken as to how things work.  I was under the impression that our dossier, once approved by Holt, would then be sent to Ethiopia to be processed and translated.  Well my friends, turns out we get on the waiting list as soon as Holt has approved it! It was within days of them receiving it.  Then they sent it to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington D. C. to be translated and processed.  Geez Louise! So as we sit and patiently wait to get that phone call, I decided I needed to start perfecting my Ethiopian cooking....that is learn how.

So here we are, day two on my journey to make injera, the sour spongy flat bread that is the staple (and plate) of all Ethiopian dishes.  If you look back at other blogs, you may be able to see some in pictures of us at restaurants.  It is made from Teff flour and it comes in different shades of brown.  Most of the injera you get at a restaurant in the States is a very pale color, almost ivory.  However, the teff I was able to buy is a much darker color.  So don't get confused! 

I started off Friday evening looking at videos on Youtube of various people making injera, nearly all of them were simply cooking it, not making the batter.  Then I watched the step by step videos of an adoptive Ethiopian mother making it from start to finish.  She said that she learned from an Ethiopian woman but let me tell you, her way was very different from that of the Ethiopians I saw making it on Youtube.  Originally hers was the only process I knew of and was planning to follow it.  So I decided that this darling woman's method was not the only method out there.  I began searching other sites and found a woman that had combined a few methods and came up with a simple one.  You can find it 3here.

So like any good blogger/chef, I took lots of pictures to document what I did.  My first attempt on Saturday was a total fail and I'm pretty sure it's for one or two reasons.  #1 I let the batter rise for way too long

#2 My pan had sides that went straight up and not curved.  Now I only intended to let the batter rise for 5-6 hours like the recipe says but I went to the store with about 1 1/2 hours left and came back 3 1/2 hours later :(  As for my pan, I was using my really nice "everything slides out so easy and it has a lid" pan. 



See how nice it is?



But with the straight up sides combined with the batter that rose too long, I ended up with this...



crusty on the outsides and mushy in the middle

Everything I've read says that your first one (or two) could end up in disaster so I was ok...until the second one....



As you can see, it's burnt on the bottom.  There are also supposed to be a lot of little holes all over the top.  On to number 3...

As you can see it stuck to the pan, was undercooked inside and was just plain awful.

So I decided to try again today (Sunday) and this time I set an alarm for 5 hours.  Well this time, the first one turned out nearly perfect!



Just look at those bubbles!



Just like the picture on the website :)

I do believe my success is due to only letting the batter rise for the minimum time of 5 hours AND using my smaller pan with sloped sides



I had to use a lid from a pot that I have but it worked.

I realised that yesterday I was probably using too much batter so I used less today...it's a smaller skillet anyways.  However, I think I was so afraid I would use too much that I started using not enough.  I also think that the pan was getting hotter than it needed to be.

This is number 4 or 5, as I said, there's supposed to be bubbles but not all the way through!! I think I may have fixed it for the very last one...

top



bottom

So you see I'm getting much better!!  You're supposed to reserve 1/4 cup of the batter for your "starter" next time but since this only made six small injera, I saved twice that.  Typically injera is about 20 inches in diameter...these are more like 8 inches. 

So my next step is to find some fenugreek online (since I can't find any in this tiny town) so that I can make Doro Wat (mmmmm chicken) and I would like to also try making Miser Alecha a delicious lentil dish.  And believe me, I never liked lentils before eating this!

I'll keep you posted on the adoption of course but also of my adventures in Ethiopian cooking!!

Dossier Sent Off!!

Well it's done.  Our dossier has been mailed off to Holt in Eugene, Oregon.  My heart was racing as I was putting the folder into the envelope at the UPS store.  I was very nervous to seal it up and hand it over to the clerk.  Our life was in that little folder.  So much private information, so much money invested, so much time. When she asked me if I wanted to insure the package I asked how much could be insured, she said the first $100 was free and so much for each $100 after that.  I said nothing but simply showed her the check for the dossier fee, she said "Oh".  I mentioned that my heart was racing because of how important that moment was and she said "mine is too after seeing that check!". :P  If she only knew...

I asked her to take a picture of me holding the envelope and the picture turned out great but for some reason it ended up getting scrambled.  At first it just had a gray block over it, you can at least see my hand holding an envelope in a UPS store :)

The weird thing is, when the little window came up for me to choose a picture to upload, the whole actual picture was showing! It's so aggravating! I'm not giving up hope for my picture! You can see it when you rotate it.  I started rotating it a lot and got it even more screwed up. Before you could at least see it on my camera still but now it just looks like this...

And again, you could see the picture just fine when you click it to upload it. Can anyone help me??

After the dossier is processed by both Holt and the Ethiopian government then we will be on the waiting list.  This is where we sit and wait fund raise like crazy so that when we get that call we are ready to say YES!! We will not say no just because we don't have the money.  God will provide.  He's taken us this far. 

Since I didn't have any actual photos to share with you on this blog, how about one of my darling niece Brooklyn lovin' some Ethiopian food...

Time For Some Fundraising!!

Can't you just see yourself in this t-shirt? It's a comfy pre-shrunk 100% cotton with a silk screen design. This design, written by me, designed by a real artist is both eye catching and makes a statement. And best of all, with your $15 purchase of this original, not sold in stores t-shirt, you are helping us bring home our children.

Ok seriously though, enough of the goofy sales pitch. We are selling these t-shirts for $15 each and putting the money straight into our adoption fund.  We purchased a box of 100 shirts and we will profit about $1,000 from that box alone.  After we have sold the entire box, we will take orders for more and purchase them.  The bigger the order, the cheaper they are per shirt.  Once you reach the 100 mark, the price goes down significantly.

Don't those Criglers look great?! I was visiting my family and I had the shirts shipped there.  I sold quite a few at church and even a couple at Family Christian Store to the employees (just by wearing the shirt and having normal conversation!).  God bless them!  Chris sold 15 to his friends "over there" and they aren't even allowed to wear them except for pj's!

You may be wondering what this shirt says by now...

One less child without a mother to hold her
One less child without a father to guide him
One less child without food to eat
One less child without a home to sleep in
One less child without clean water to drink
One less child longing for a family to love her      Gotta give Chris props for this line ;)
One less child without medicine to heal him
One less child to go without the knowledge of a God who loves him

I want you to read that again.  I was laying in bed one night trying to think of what I would want on a t-shirt if we were to sell one and came up with these words. It was around midnight and I began crying.  It's not just something sweet to put on a shirt, it's reality.  When I was shopping for a bumper sticker to put on my car (eventually just created one myself on vista print), I kept seeing "6 million orphans....minus one" or "minus two". 

More on that subject in another blog...I started to write but it was getting too heavy for this post. ;)  SO that is where I got the "One Less" from. 

You may be asking how you can help if you are far away.  Well, do you see that paypal "donate" button to the right?  And you probably got the link to this blog post from either email or facebook right?  If you want to purchase a t-shirt, simply email me your address with the size shirt you want, I have Small through XXL and you can pay with the donate button on the right.  If you do not want to pay through the donate button, you can mail me a check. :)  It's super cheap to put a shirt into a padded envelope and mail it! 
Now for you skinny people, I only have a few Smalls left BUT since the order got a little mixed up and the shirts are 100% pre-shrunk cotton....you can just order a medium and wash it on hot and it should shrink for ya. ;)  If you are concerned about the shirt shrinking now that I said that, I washed mine on cold and dried on low and it was fine.

I know we talk a lot about money on this blog and we do the best we can to get the expenses paid for ourselves but sometimes it just doesn't happen.  We applied to four different organizations for grants or loans (no interest), that's plan A.  Plan B is get a bank loan.  We've just received our first "sorry" letter for a grant.  Once we get that wonderful phone call saying we are matched with a sibling set we have to pay them $15,000.  If it is only one child it will be just over $9,000.  And I mean within days of the phone call.  We have to be prepared. 

I want to thank the beautiful and talented Gwynne Gardner for designing this shirt for us, it far exceeded our expectations!

Thank you for helping us bring our children home. We love and miss you all.

So Far....

I've had a lot of questions lately on how the adoption is going. Well, it's going.  I didn't really want this blog to be about my rambling thoughts for this whole adoption process so I have mostly only blogged when something big has happened.  Well I'm realizing that that's not always what y'all want to hear.  So here I am to catch everyone up on what's going on in the Turner Family Expansion.

The dossier is nearly complete. I merely have to take a trip to Springfield to get two documents state certified (poor me, I guess I'll have to go to Target while I'm there).  I'll be doing that around the 15th of this month, after all this snow and ice goes away!!  Rabbit trail: I keep having the tune from Muppets Treasure Island in my head "We've got cabin fever! We've got cabin fever!".  I will attempt to leave "the hill" for a staff photo at work tomorrow afternoon....I will take the Jeep, not the Pruis. ;)  Back on the path.

Although the dossier is almost finished (and could have been finished a month ago), we still need a big chunk of change to send with it.  We have applied to one ministry for a grant and I have an application in front of me that I will be filling out after I'm done typing for an interest free loan.  We have to wait until the 15th to file our taxes (stupid IRS weren't ready with the new form) so I don't know how much we'll be getting back. I can't imagine we'll be getting too much back really.  We do have a decent amount of deductions but nothing major.  On a random note, the sunset is quite beautiful right now, hues of purple, orange and pink, a perfect winter sunset. :) Anyways, I told you I would ramble!! You know I'm random, tangents are my friend, hehe.

Chris left just over two weeks ago for Afghanistan and yes, for a year...and no, we're not putting the adoption on hold. I already told you we wouldn't remember?  The next time we see each other will be in Ethiopia.  When we meet our children for the first time. When we first start to see what our family could be.  It's quite poetic really. 

In my first post I told you that there are no guarantees in this adoption process, that we could only get one child, it could be either gender, any age five or under. Well our pastor gave a sermon right after Christmas that was a little convicting for me.  He said some things that made me realize that too often I leave things up to chance and just expect it to be God's will, forgetting that God tells us "ask and you shall receive".  Our pastor said that too often we pray "Lord, if it's your will....", and we say that as if to cover our butts (paraphrasing) in case what we're praying for doesn't happen. It takes away from our faith. I realized that I wasn't praying with faith anymore, I was simply praying "God, you know what's best, just take care of it".  I had become afraid to ask anymore.  After asking for years to get pregnant only for it to never happen.  Would you believe that now I would pray that I wouldn't get pregnant? (agency policy that if I were to get pregnant the adoption is canceled)

So now with my refreshed faith, here are some things we are praying for and ask you to pray for them as well.  For Chris and I to not only survive through this deployment as a couple but to thrive.  For us to get all of the money we need for the adoption and quickly...I don't want to hear anything about "in His timing", we're praying in faith here, we need this money now!  For us to be matched with two children, a boy and a girl.  For Chris to get a five day pass to come to the court date for the first trip to Ethiopia so that he can use his R&R for the second trip.  For happy children that will adjust easily and bond well with both Chris and I.  I think that's all for now, I'll let you know if I think of more.

I was looking at the Holt website today, at the profiles of some of the Waiting children they have.  There are some that are perfectly healthy that they have had since infants for eight years. The only reason why they are not adopted now is because they are so much older.  Holt wants them to go to families that already have children older than these Waiting children. I know I focus a lot on money sometimes but really, we made our decision to adopt from Ethiopia a long time ago and if it weren't for the money, we would have been matched with children by now.  I know that God has the perfect children waiting for us, I just don't want them to wait any longer.  Again, please pray with us.

This is us on our last hot date three days before he left.

New donate button...

Hi ya'll! Some of you may notice that I've added a "donate" paypal button on the side there.  I did not start this blog to raise money for our adoption.
As I said in my first post, this blog is to keep friends and family informed on what is going on with our adoption.  So why the button? There is a wonderful family that has started something amazing!
They call it their 24 days of giving.  They are chosing 24 families that are in the middle of an adoption and highlighting them on their own blog so that others can donate and help them along.  You can read all about it here.  I put our name in the hat and we needed a place to donate to if we are chosen so that explains the button. ;) Just keep going back to their blog to see all of the amazing families and to see how to help them bring their children home. 

Thanks! Love ya!

Home study in hand!

It finally happened! We got our home study in the mail!  After several delays we finally have it in our hands, right in front of me actually.  Before there were any delays we had a lot of "you'll get it ... unless something weird happens and there are delays like..." Well it seems like all of those delays happened! Oy vey.  They gave us four copies and already two are claimed. One for the dossier and the other for the USCIS form.  We've been able to save up the $830 needed for the USCIS (customs) form and the fingerprinting fee that goes with it.  Now we need to get the $3,000 to go with the dossier.  We plan on applying for some financial aid since it will take us too long to save up all of that money on our own.  Starting February-ish we'll be getting an extra $1,000 per month due to Chris' deployment but we don't want to wait until the end of April to mail off the dossier.  We'd like to have it sent off by Christmas.  Well I say sent off but really just at the Holt office in OR, it will take a little longer for the USCIS form to come back approved and that has to go with the dossier to Ethiopia.  So a loan or grant would be great if we could get one to pay for the dossier.  There will be other, higher expenses later but we'll tackle those when we get there, hopefully the extra deployment pay will help a lot. 

About a month ago we went to St Louis for some parenting classes required by Holt and taught by our social worker.  It was quite an eye opener to hear some of the things that were taught.  Now when I say parenting classes I mean parenting an adopted child from a third world country, with a different background, culture, language, different everything classes.  There were times that I felt guilty for tearing the child(ren) from their native country and away from everything they have ever known.  But Chris had to keep reminding me that the children we adopt are either true orphans or their parents chose to give them a better life, one where they don't starve to death or die from a simple illness that would be no problem with Western medicine. 

I have also started really picking on things like children's books, programs, even commercials about being racially diverse.  In our packet for the classes there was an article called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.  I highly suggest you google it and read it.  A small example of how powerful this article is...she gives a list of "some of the daily effects of white privilege" in her life...."I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race" and "I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin", there are many many more, some of them with an "ouch" to them but she has a point.  We were just in a book store this week looking for children's books and the vast majority of them were portraying white children...or animals...or even purple or blue children.  Really the only one I saw with a black person was a book about Harriet Tubman.  We had a list of books that feature black children but they were out of stock on all of them, basically they carry them but don't purposefully stock them, "but we can order it for you".  OH and there was another with a little black baby titled "Pacifiers aren't for forever" or something like that.

LAME

And I'm not just complaining about the lack of "black" children's books, I didn't really see any with Asian or Hispanic children either.  Ok enough of my soap box.

After the classes were over on the Saturday, we went to a great Ethiopian restaurant.  Surprisingly, there are several to choose from in St Louis, we chose Meskerem (that means Spring, or it's the month Spring comes...something like that).  It was so stinking good! For an appetizer we got beef Sambosa

I could have eaten a whole meal of these suckers!
Then we got the Meskerem Combo platter for our meal since we couldn't decide on just one dish

The whole meal is served on a huge piece of injera, their flat sour dough bread, also used to pick up the food and eat with (you can see mine folded up on the bottom right corner).  In the middle is the ever popular Doro Wat (chicken stew) and yes, that's a hard boiled egg in it.  On the left is Tibs Wat (beef stew) and on the right is Miser Wat (supposed to be lamb stew but they were out of lamb so it was beef).  On the top and bottom are Yebeg Alecha and Miser Alecha (lentil somethings).  It was SO good. I didn't think I would like the lentil dishes but I loved them just as much as the meat ones! 
Here's an example of eating the food with the injera

And here's the damage we did

We decided not to eat the egg, the other food was just too good to waste stomach space with a hard boiled egg. :-P
Please pray with us that we will get the money needed and fast.  I know, all in God's timing but He can just have us wait while on the waiting list, money in hand. ;)  We need to get everything done for the dossier, including fingerprints (again) for the USCIS form before the end of the year.  Once we mail off the USCIS form, they send us a letter telling us when and where to get the fingerprints done. I've talked to others and they've said that you can go in earlier than your appointment.  On the website it says they take service members without appointments (but we still need the appointment letter).  We'll have to go to St Louis so we're praying we'll get the appointment for a good time or we can at least go beforehand.  Chris will be doing some traveling for deployment training and then we'll be doing a bit of travelling before Christmas.  Hopefully you get my stressing on the importance of these fingerprinting appointments.  I'm not trying to stress over this stuff but it's a little hard not to at times.  So please pray that I can let go and let God!!  I hate not being in control! Argh!  Ok this is a long enough blog.  I think I've updated ya'll on everything and given my soap box speech for the week.  Have a great weekend! Happy Veterans Day!