Fri, May 30 - Ethiopian, and the World's Best Meatloaf

7.58am - the lovely fruit from Nadya's garden - used just one orange today for my Brazilian acai, plus half a banana, at home.8.05am - and here's the result, with some extra banana. Acai by itself has a lovely dark purplish color. Once you add banana and orange, it becomes nice and sweet - but turns this unsightly brownish color. In Rio they often just serve it with crushed ice - when I was teaching there, I had one like that every day on my way to class.

9.09am - a fuji, at work. For those of you who have noticed the conspicuous absence of this my most favorite fruit staple over the last months, let me explain that fujis, as apples in general, are simply not in season right now. Not that you can't find them at the store, but they're flown in from Chile. Now I can live with the carbon footprint of mangos from Mexico or rhubarb from Washington State. But apples all the way from Chile? I'd rather wait until the fall. So this one was an exception...

9.49am - remember that bacon chocolate? well, the same brand has all kinds of interesting flavors, including white chocolate and kalamata olive (not pictured or purchased, as I'm no friend of white chocolate), and the below two, in miniature format: Indian curry and coconut, and a more conventional Gianduja. Both of them pretty darn sweet.

12.22pm - Ehtiopian samussa (filled w/ lentils), at Fassica Ethiopian Restaurant.

12.26pm - the veggie combo - collard greens, cabbage and two kinds of lentils plus salad, served on injera bread, at Fassica, with a very friendly Eritrean gentleman by the name of Solomon who had many interesting views on how extraterrestrials could influence the outcome of the upcoming election. Ah, the people you meet when you go to have lunch on your own...

a close-up of the porous injera bread, made from teff flour. You rip it into pieces and then use it to scoop up the food with your fingers. This was great, home-made Ethiopian food btw. I remember from some of the places in Little Ethiopia on Fairfax that the veggie dishes kind of tasted all alike. I think this may be why Ritesh never wants to go - he thinks of Ethiopian cooking as a lesser cousin of Indian cooking. But this was delicious, and each dish had its own distinct flavor. If only I knew what spices they used, I would report on that, too...

12.56pm - Ethiopian tea (w/ cardamom and cinnamon) on the house, at Fassica.

18.10h - sesame snacks in traffic, on the way to Cindy's.

20.30h - Ritesh's incredible, amazing home-made buffalo meatloaf, potatoes and gravy, leftover green beans amandine, at home, with Ritesh. This was the very best meatloaf I've had in my entire life - just blew me away. Boy, I'm glad I'm married to this guy - and no longer a vegetarian... I made him sit down and write down how he made it (including the barbecue coating), we'll try to reproduce it and if it predictably turns out great, I'll post the recipe.