Happy Birthday!!

I know that some of you saw the photos on Facebook but I wanted to post them here too :-)

On my birthday (Saturday) the kids and Jared took me to an Ethiopia restaurant here in Rome...actually it's Ethiopian/Eritrean.














When we got there we asked our waitress if she could recommend a traditional Ethiopian dish for our family. She picked out the same dish but with two degrees of spiciness, a mild one for the kids and a more spicy one for the adults. She warned us that Ethiopian food was "hand-eating" food. (and then about halfway into the meal she brought forks--Iliana and Judah were excited about that--I really thought they would get a kick out of eating with their hands!)












The flat bread was a little more sourdoughy than I had expected and the food was WAY more delicious than I had expected...it was SO good!




Elijah really liked it,




























Jared was sold on it, Iliana and Judah (and Elijah, of course) were ecstatic when our waitress brought a surprise plate of french fries toward the end of the meal...We really enjoyed our experience! I've looked up a couple of general recipe sites so that I can get a feel for ingredients in Ethiopian food...but I haven't settled on a recipe that I will be able to:

1. FIND all of the ingredients here
2. reproduce without help

Check them out! http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes/ethiopian and http://ethiopianrecipes.net/ and http://www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/recipes.html

ENJOY!!!