Ethiopian Food and Holiday Baking List

As I signed into the blog to write this post I noticed my last recipe was a split pea soup. And here I come to talk about another split pea recipe. Hopefully you like split peas! This one is different though; it is Ethiopian! I have wanted to take a stab at making an Ethiopian dish ever since my first taste at Wass Ethiopian in Hamilton. Ethiopian food is very vegetarian friendly, healthy, and flavourful, and if you haven't tried it, you must! I saved this recipe from Vegan Dad over a year ago and finally got around to making it yesterday. I followed the recipe pretty closely, substituting real butter for the margarine and leaving out the berbere because I didn't have any on hand. I found a place to buy berbere in Guelph but I just haven't got around to actually purchasing it. While the recipe turned out quite fine without it, berbere really gives authentic flavour to Ethiopian dishes and I look forward to adding it next time.

I save recipes that I find online into Evernote, and I literally have over a thousand recipes saved (I know...). I made a pact to myself to actually get cooking these recipes last January and since then I have made 87 of them! I can search by ingredient so it makes it easy to pull recipes like this one out that I had completely forgotten about. Sometimes though, when it comes to Holiday and special occasion baking, I can't find a recipe that I want to use! Mostly because I am so indecisive and there are just too many options. I had a bit of a break between exams the other day and I decided to make my Holiday baking list. I did find a couple from my Evernote archives while the others were more recent findings. I narrowed it down to the following recipes:

Crispy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Oh She Glows

As soon as I saw these posted I knew I wanted to make them. This is my kind of cookie.

Granola Nut Clusters from Oh She Glows

Oh She Glows was on a roll when she followed up the cookies with this recipe which makes a great edible gift. It is always good to have edible gifts hanging around for last minute host gifts, so I hope to make these as well.

Pumpkin Brownies from My Green Diet

These brownies look nice and dense and the ingredient list looks nice and healthy. This is also a good treat to have on hand for unexpected company over the Holidays, as they make a healthy snack if you end up having lots of leftovers.

Raw Walnut Cacao Dreamy Bars from Rawmazing

Dreamy bars are right! I have had this recipe saved since August and have been waiting for a good time to make them. The Holidays are definitely the right time. These bars look rich, filled with nutrient dense ingredients that you can feel good about eating. As the recipe describes, a little goes along way with these guys. I only hope the end result lives up to my potentially inflated expectations.

Well there you have it, this is what I will have in tow with me to Holiday parties this year! I am looking forward to my last two exams being over so I can get cracking!