This Authentic Ethiopian Dish Feeds Both Body and Soul (By Gloria Alamrew)

Learning to love injera has given me a deeper appreciation of my culture Gloria Alamrew

remember not liking injera when I was a kid. The spongy, slightly sour bread wrapped around a savory combination of perfectly cured and spiced meats like chicken, goat, and lamb or the equally flavorful spinach, cabbage, and potatoes just didn’t appeal to my six-year-old palate. The start of the meal wasn’t so bad, when the injera was mostly untouched by the wat (stew or sauce). But by the time all the juices of that day’s particular wat had fully soaked through the injera, turning it into a painter’s sunset dream of red and orange and yellow, I was turned off. I called it “mushy,” and I wasn’t eating it.

My parents, like most Ethiopians, are patient people. Looking back, I suppose they never forced me to eat anything per se, but I always inherently understood that there wasn’t much choice. The food that was put in front of me was meant to be eaten. During what felt like especially long stretches of injera and wat for weeks, I would beg my mom for what I thought to be “white people food”: spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, or even sandwiches! I didn’t yet know the true gift that was the cuisine that sat in our fridge and freezer. I didn’t know how integral it would be to my understanding of my own identity as an Ethiopian.

Food was one of the few things Ethiopian immigrants had to connect them to back home. Following the revolution in the 1970s, thousands of Ethiopians fled, creating the first wave of our still-growing diaspora. Ethiopians scattered across Europe, the United States, and Canada, bringing little with them. Most, like my parents, had no idea when, or even if, they would return home. So the question became twofold: How do we survive, and how do we do it well?

With the help of clever substitutions and borrowing from other friends in the community, many Ethiopians were able to continue the tradition of cooking our beloved meals from back home in their new homes. In the 1990s, the more “exotic” meats like lamb or goat weren’t yet popular with the mostly white foodie crowds, so we were able to get them at grocery stores or halal butchers for fairly cheap. Any Ethiopian first-generation immigrant kid can tell you how our freezers were constantly filled with meat, leaving (unfortunately) very little room for ice cream sandwiches or popsicles. My parents’ friends would generously bring us spices from their trips back home — spices that my mom would then insidiously store in old ice cream tubs in our fridge. Ethiopians know how to share. We’ve been sharing everything since the start of recorded time. Ethiopia is the birthplace of civilization; the first human walked our lands — you may know her as Lucy, but we know her as Dinknesh, meaning “you are wonderful,” a far more fitting name for humanity’s mother. We are the birthplace of coffee, a gift that fuels every office in the world to this day. But most important — or at least most important to this piece of my story — is that Ethiopians share our food. We eat together, with our hands, around one platter, and we even feed each other, what we call gursha. Our food and the ceremony surrounding it create an offering and a receiving of humility and love. When you arrive at an Ethiopian home, you won’t just eat — you will be fed.

Injera is the literal base of our culinary traditions. Far beyond being just what we eat, it is foundational to everything that sustains us. Even the process of making injera is shrouded in the kind of mystery and mythos found only in Africa. The grinding of the teff (the indigenous Ethiopian grain now considered a “superfood” by many a food blog) is incredibly labor intensive. If the teff is ground too coarsely, the texture of your injera could come out chunky and uneven, but if ground too finely, you risk creating a thin, lifeless batter. In probably the most beautiful part of the creation of injera, the fine teff flour is mixed with water and ersho, a pale-yellow liquid chock-full of yeasts and collected from the previous batch of fermented teff flour batter. Each new iteration of the batter that births injera came from the last one, a chain that can go back an untold number of times. My grandma always says injera is the ancestor that stays with us; the same ersho that fermented the batter that produced the injera that fed our great-great-grandparents is in the injera that is feeding us today. Injera is the literal through line that connects us to our country, to our history — to each other.

There is a spirituality to injera that is hard to appreciate when you’re a kid. Being a very religious and superstitious people, Ethiopians often use injera in their offerings of blessings to you: “Egzhabier injera yistish,” meaning, “May God give you injera.” Furthermore, in the Amharic version of the Lord’s Prayer, for the line “give us this day our daily bread,” Ethiopians use “injera” for the word “bread,” even though we have a completely separate word for bread. When someone is carrying injera, whether it be in the house or in the markets back home, respect is shown by letting that person pass first. My dad even recalls his own confusion as a child regarding the significance of injera: A funeral procession was passing through their neighborhood, and he asked his dad, my grandfather, why people stop when a funeral procession passes by. My grandpa answered, “Injera and the dead are the same. They may not be alive, but they give life to the living.”

Ethiopians often use injera in their offerings of blessings to you: “Egzhabier injera yistish,” meaning, “May God give you injera.”

It’s hard to explain to a child the meanings of these things, how something we eat could mean so much more than just a meal, but that’s probably because it’s something that can’t be explained so much as it is realized. My mom always says Ethiopians eat with their hands because we made the food with our hands. There should be no cold, metal separation of forks and spoons between us and the food that feeds us. Eating with our hands is the closest way to honor and thank the injera for what it has given us.

Now, in 2019, with the diaspora still growing and expanding, Ethiopians have solidified themselves in their new homes across the world, and there exist plenty of places where we could easily buy ready-made injera and skip the arduous work that comes with making it ourselves. And yet my mom still insists on making injera herself. It is a true link to our ancestors and to that ephemeral “back home” place that can often feel farther and farther away. My dad often comments that no matter what he’s eaten throughout his day, he doesn’t feel like he’s really eaten until he’s had injera. The day is incomplete without it. And it’s true. That soft, spongy, slightly sour flatbread that I often balked at as a child for being too mushy is now the thread that weaves through and holds together the tapestry that is my remembering of back home. It’s what keeps me full.

Source: Zoramedium

#Eliaswondemu #እስክንድርነጋ #Arkebe #Reyot #SMNE #DemocracyUnderThreatinEthiopia #TayeNegussie #tamagnebeyeneshow #Ethiopianmigrants #voa #TERRORISM #ቅዱስሲኖዶስ #NashvillePolice #ቴዲአፍሮ #httpsyoutubeGoQtrtw6Ik #Boeing777 #ታደሰብሩ #Trump #HornofAfrica #southafrica #Fightcorruption #AlShabaab #beatingMuslimprotesters #girmaseifu #TamagnBeyene #clans #womensconference #mamomuche #MelesZenawi #ofOPridecom #TerrorismAct2000 #history #PresidentUhuruKenyatta #MelesZenawisLegacy #CRUELCONGAME #breaking #Tayit #athletics #121stadwa #TPLF #TigistMamo #Tehaypublisher #Britishjurisprudence #የኢትዮጵያሕዝብየጋራትግልሸንጎ #menelik #AbiyAhmed #USEmbassyinYemen #Ginbot7 #SolomonYaredofJigjiga #AtseTewodros #ElectionDebate2007Ethiopia #fasildemoz #Pmhailemariam #qoshe #httpsyoutube5qMRf7wyqtI #HaileSelassie #MediaJamming #ethiopian #nucleartest #ብጹእአቡነመልከጼዴቅ #ኢህአዴግ #mussolini #restaurantowner #abiyafework #VisionEthiopia #TTPLF #ህጋዊቅዱስሲኖዶስ #capitanteshometenkolu #Adwa #samsonasfaw #Hanna #EOTC #sbsradio #ZelalemEshete #addisababa #SiyeAbraha #Mogherini #Horriblecorruption #dies #malaria #DonaldTrump #KebourGhenna #httpsyoutubeSZA3R4uXupI #Ethiopianege #AG7 #Pyongyang #BewketuSeyoum #MohammedAdemo #Ethiopianpolice #TeddfyAfro #MeraraGudina #httpsyoutube2NSvgxFojds #THETELEGRAPH #ProfAlemayehu #2019 #documenttary #MajorDawitWGiorgis #France24 #Featured #AndargachewTsege #Northkorea #CrimesofMelesZenawi #KingHaileselase #TampereUniversity #Indonesian #keneya #Berhanunega #dvlottery #የህወሀት #OkelloOchalla #disaster #Ethiopianuniversities #hailemariyamdesalegn #Nairobiattack #Meles #DemaNegewo #USEmbassy #somali #Thehiddendrought #eskindir #andualem #wishetam #olompic #usa #atikiltassefa #humanrightsviolations #horruption #TPLFdeceives #HOLYSYNODOFTHEETHIOPIAN #9ኙፓርቲዎች #Ginbot7movement #EngineerYilikalGetnet #TadesseBiruKersmo #yemeni #AdwaVictory #ፕሮፌሰርአለማየሁ #httpsyoutubeKg9iA3ANg7g #httpsyoutubeihKf07Cvdwk #Teddyafro #BezawitHailegiorgis #PresidentTrump #httpsyoutubex5xeJMLXZqA #tegayetegenu #lasvegasshooting #AnaniaSorri #HailemariamDesalegn #Oromoleader #Reconciliation #httpsyoutubed3AbNP3YDI #Newyork #BBC #boing737crash #zeritukebede #ethniccleansing #BloodLobbying #ethnicfederalism #Sudan #ኦሀዮደብረመድኃኒትመድኃኔዓለም #በቅዱስፓትርያርኩ #REQUESTFORSANCTIONS #ProfAlemariam #kassahunseboka #ThaboMbeki #Ethiopianplanecrash #LalangoHayesso #የማለዳወግ #TsegayeKebede #EPRDF #MagnaCarta #XenophobicAttacks #enqoqulish #ethiopia #ተክሉአባተ #obang #rape #iaaf #3crradio #TedrosAdhanom #Sudaneseopposition #Ethiopiansvictory #ginbo7 #neaminZeleke #AzebMesfin #mosquitoes #EthiopianAirlines #esat #AlemtsehayWedajo