Ethiopian Meals

 Debs and I stayed at the same hotel I have stayed at the four previous trips I have taken to Adama. The nice thing is that breakfast is included and it was the same spread every morning. This is my sister's plate piled with rice, eggs and vegetables. Let's just say that Ethiopia doesn't do American breakfast food.

While I tolerate rice and love vegetables, they aren't something I can stomach too well as breakfast. The first few days I just ate the bread with some peanut butter, but by day three, I added some vegetables. The veggies are very good, but cooked in some serious oil, so we put a napkin under them to soak some of it up.

We generally only ate out one other meal of the day, and this was our usual spot. It was only two or three blocks away from our hotel, but had better food with a shorter wait and a smaller bill.

You can not judge the quality of the restaurant by the wandering cats; most had a few cats. This cat not only shared a bit of chicken under our table, it also drank from the pool. I was also surprised how many people swam at different pools, because it was like 70 degrees and not swimming weather in my opinion.

Another bonus about our favorite place was flushing toilets with sinks, and one of only two places I have seen in Ethiopia that had towels to dry your hands. Brooke wasn't sure what to do with them. To this day, when the paper towel dispenser is empty in a bathroom, Selah, Bella and I pat our hands on our pants and proclaim "Ethiopian style".

Ethiopia has many places with brick ovens that produce good pizza. This one was at the German hotel named...German hotel. It has fancy cushioned chairs, chandeliers and no cats, but still no towels in the bathroom!

Most places serve rolls, but not with butter - instead these three sauces are standard. The green is hot!

We also found it humorous that all the glass bottles of varying size are marked 300 ml; clearly, they are not equal. I think Coke is up to something fishy since their bottles were always the clearly smaller.

 Brooke literally did not eat anything other than the standard injera with chicken and a few different sauces and vegetables. This whole pile of dishes is an injera order. I don't think it is intended to be a one person size serving and she barely eats more than Bella. Deb and my choice then became to eat injera every meal or keep giving it away on the streets. This is why it wasn't tough to turn down injera by the end of the week when it was offered in homes that we visited!

This in Amharic for Coka Cola - turns out that they don't commonly use the vowels, so this ck cl. At least that is what I think I learned in my brief Amharic lesson.