Merry Ganna!

January 7th is the day that Christmas is celebrated in Ethiopia. So, in celebration, yesterday we went to our local Ethiopian restaurant, The Queen of Sheba. Plus, I'm a slacker mom and haven't quite gotten around to learning to cook Ethiopian food. That's as far as the celebration went, mainly because I hadn't given it much thought until Friday since all my energy was being put into actually surviving some sort of crazy funkiness that involved running a fever for a week. (Yeah. Probably the same thing Kenny had here.)


Get all that chicken, Sam. This was after he took his injera and wiped all the goodness off the chicken!


Grace & Emma looking on, shocked at the show the boys are putting on. Notice they are satisfied with their simple (and clean) rice & chicken dishes. Although, they did feel a little left out, so they opted to eat theirs with their hands, too.


Is it good, Charlie?


You notice he has it almost ear to ear...

I really should take a video, because taking the boys to eat Ethiopian food is really quite entertaining. For one, most of their food is not the easiest to eat if you are actually trying to stay clean. Mainly because they don't use utensils, but injera (flatbread) to pick up the food. Now let's be honest. Sam can't eat anything without making a HUGE mess, so you know allowing him to eat solely with his hands is only going to make that huge mess worse. And second, the boys eat like we haven't fed them in weeks when we go in there! I can only imagine why. Think about your favorite comfort food that your Granny only makes once a year...doro wat is the boy's comfort food! Clearly. So they gobble it up so fast you barely even know it was even on their plates. Gone. Plate cleaned. Spotless.

I'm gradually learning. This time I put extra napkins on the side of my body facing Sam because he sloshes around so much when he's eating. I came away fairly clean this go round. I laugh as the other patrons excuse themselves and they simply wipe the table. Little do they know when we leave, a complete linen change will be in line. White tablecloths meet their match with Sam. And next time, we will pray before the food gets there. You can't actually set an order of doro wat in front of the boys and expect them to not dive right in. It was like watching a crack addict going through withdrawals as they had to wait for all to be served and for us to pray before being allowed to chow down. And yes. I just compared my children to crack addicts. Sue me.

Remember next year...January 7th. Find your local Ethiopian restaurant and go try it out!!