Cravin’ some injera

Ladies and gentlemen, the day I never thought would come, has indeed come. Today, I actually craved injera!

In case you missed it in my posts before, injera is a local food that they eat here for literally 3 meals a day. They eat it with EVERYTHING! It is made from teff flour and is allowed to ferment for three days before it is poured on to a large griddle and cooked. It is sort of similar to a crepe or pancake, except to use the words of Paul Theroux in Dark Star Safari, “it is cool, moist, and rubbery, less like a crepe than an old bathmat.” I was reading Mr. Theroux’s book the other day about his journey across Africa and came across this description of injera and thought it fit perfectly. The first time I ate it, I remember likening the texture to a rubbery sponge. It is really hard to describe until you have had it. When I first got here, people told me that I would start craving the injera after a while and I said to myself “Impossible, absolutely impossible. I will never crave injera. Ever.”

Well, tonight I ate those words – literally. We had injera yesterday because I brought my language nurturer over to see the new house and there is no other option of what to serve a national besides injera, so that is what we had. Our house worker was here, so I had her cook potatoes, carrots, and green beans, and we had that with the injera as well as lentils (which I skipped on). Tonight, I walked in the house and found the leftover beans, carrots and potatoes in the refrigerator and decided that sounded good for dinner, but wasn’t enough for a whole meal. All I could think about was how good it was yesterday at lunch with that injera. So, injera for dinner it was. And it totally hit the spot! I’m calling it a miracle and an answer to prayer. Now, if we could just work on my desire for anything with berebere in it (which is basically everything here), I would be almost national : )