Our Tasty Tuesday adventure took us to Little Africa this week. It wasn’t the first time we had been there, but it was so long ago my kids had forgotten all about it. We took Mr. Binder this time, under completely sneaky pretenses. I told him we were using a Restaurant.com coupon and going out to eat. Yay!
Here is what I did not tell him: 1) It was African food which meant that there was 2) no beer and also, by the way 3) no meat. I am totally not above lying to expand my family’s horizons.
HUGE props to this I’ll-have-a-burger-and-a-pint man. He won the Best Sport award when he dove into the family platter and tried lentils prepared 3 different ways. He and Maybelle shared a love for the green lentil dish, on the grounds that it “sort of tastes like tacos”. A.P. didn’t like the injera bread this time, and since that is the main vehicle for getting the food into your mouth (There are no utensils – only bread and finger bowls), he was out of luck. Still, there was a carrot salad that he chowed on.
Remember the Ginger Tea we had at Chez Olga? We tried a pot at Little Africa too. I hope this doesn’t make us the weirdest family ever (actually, I don’t care) but we loved this tea. All four of us were completely smitten with it.
I started thinking about mixed tapes. You whippersnappers who have only had MP3 playlists will laugh at me like I’m singing the praises of Eight Tracks, but there was something magic about mixed tapes. One little connection to another song, like both bands having the same influences, and you had your transition to the next song. The teas were different, but with similar influences. Which makes sense, really. Haiti has a pretty heavy African history. If they had been songs instead of pots of tea, I would have put them right next to each other on my mixed tape.
We were surprisingly stuffed after this meal. Maybe the bread is really filling – or maybe it was the tea. There was one dish we ate every last drop of, and it was made from chick pea flour. It tasted a little like falafel; which made me think of how close Africa is to the Middle East, which brought me, figuratively, to my next song. Be on the lookout for a Middle Eastern Tasty Tuesday soon 
