When friends came to visit, we pretty much spent the whole time baking together. That became the only thing I knew how to do!!


I started selling out of my apartment, I had a little menu, ranging from classic flavors like chocolate peanut butter and red velvet, to whacky flavors like Sloppy Drunk (rum cake with tequila buttercream and a wine-soaked piece of fruit) and Irish Barfight (butterscotch-filled vanilla cake with a whiskey buttercream, dipped in cherry puree and sprinkled with mini chips).


People ordered them for wedding showers, baby showers, weddings, birthdays, valentines day, Christmas, Hanukkah, anniversaries, or just to eat for themselves (which I encouraged)!


The flavor I sold the most of was the Pumpkin Spice cake with a cinnamon buttercream and a candied pecan. I always made a giant batch of candied pecans so I'd have them leftover to eat. What is the deal with pecans and why are they so impervious to our willpower?


New Jersey is special to me, not only because it is the birthplace of my veganism, but also the place I remember spending most of my time in my kitchen, baking during every free hour, no matter if I had 6 friends in the kitchen with me, or if it was just me and my tunes. I loved hosting brunches and dinners in my apartment, and loved meeting new friends and learning that when you're new in town, the best way to meet people is to lure them in with vegan baked goods!

As I've discussed in previous posts, my fiancé Alex and I have been celebrating all of our special occasions with Ethiopian food for years, be it birthdays, anniversaries, New Years Eve, new jobs, big accomplishments, Valentines day, and even the Ethiopian New Year! We love it so much! I've even heard Alex describing it to others by saying, "It puts every other cuisine to shame." Where we grew up there aren't really any Ethiopian restaurants, so none of our friends or family had ever tried it. In the past few years, we took my parents there a few times, my best friend (and now Maid of Honor), my sister (to be) and some new friends to Mesob, and every single one of them loved it! Even my dad, who is a pretty traditional American Dad eater, really liked it. So that's saying something.
Wouldn't it make sense to serve this food at my wedding? I mean, it's the best. And it's our favorite.
I think we'd be doing our guests a disservice if we didn't serve them Ethiopian at our wedding!
I'd like to give this food a proper introduction to all who aren't familiar with it. If you are familiar, you can just look at the pretty pictures, because this will all be old news to you.


When we go out for Ethiopian, we like to get at least one appetizer. Lately, we are all about sambusas, a spicy lentil-stuffed pastry triangle. But we've been known to get Ingudai Tibbs (spicy mushrooms), Kategna (injera bread with spiced oil), and Azifa (spiced lentil salad), too. The food is served with Injera, a sourdough flatbread, and is used as your utensil. Eating with your hands is somehow incredibly gratifying! The injera compliments each bite. You just tear off a piece, and grab a bit of food, but be sure to grab with your right hand if you are dining with true Ethiopian food enthusiasts.


Some of our favorite dishes are pictured below, starting clockwise at the top: Tikil Gomen (cabbage and potatoes), Butecha (fluffy spiced chickpeas/my personal fave), Misir Wat (spicy lentils), Atkilt Alicha (green beans and carrots), Dinich Wat (spicy potatoes), and Shiro (spicy ground chickpea dip) in the center. These are staples at most Ethiopian restaurants, but they are done best by Mesob!


Alongside you are served extra injera to grab every last bit of food from the platter! Towards the end, I like to grab the injera off the plate that the food was placed on. The flavors of the stews had seeped into it and made it the best injera ever!

I hope that helps any skeptics understand not only how important Ethiopian cuisine is to us, but also how delicious and exciting it is! It will make our wedding dinner unique, but also very special and personal! I'm sure I won't need to convince anyone after they have tried it. Maybe after having it they will be making trips to Jersey just for the food, like we often do! We're so excited to share it with everyone we love.

It's a tradition we have in our little two-person family that we celebrate all special occasions, including but most importantly birthdays, with Ethiopian food. Our favorite restaurant is in New Jersey where we used to live, so we make the trek out there every once in a while. Now, to go over two tolled NY State bridges, through the Garden State Parkway, and whatever godforsaken traffic said obstacles may be withholding, that's got to be some damn good food. Believe me -- it is that good. We make a thing of it and get appetizers, eat every last bite on the platter, get Ethiopian coffee, and vegan chocolates. They are also BYOB, so we bring a couple bottles of red wine and yeah, like I said, make a thing of it.


Now, while photographs of Ethiopian food may not be magazine-cover status, the taste of it is way better than anything that has every graced the cover of Bon Appetit. This is especially true at Mesob Restaurant in Montclair, New Jersey. I have eaten at dozens of Ethiopian restaurants in several different states including legendary DC and PA. Mesob still wins. This is the best food. Ever.


We went to Mesob on the weekend before my birthday, which fell on a Tuesday, and the hassle of getting to and from Mesob on a weeknight is pretty impossible. So on my actual birthday, Alex cooked! It's really cute to see this super learned almost doctor get so flustered and confused by tasks that I complete on the reg. It makes me feel powerful. Anyway, he did a great job. He followed the recipe for New England Glam Chowder from Isa Does It, and lucky for him I always make notes in the margins of anything confusing or what I thought worked or suggestions for next time, such as "salt!" or "put nori in the blender," because I could see him literally losing his mind trying to crumble nori by hand. It came out great and we adorned it with handfuls of oyster crackers.


Surprise! He made me cupcakes! Baby's first cupcake! Also the first cupcake I ate that I didn't make or buy! They were perfect. The best birthday cupcakes I could ask for.


We put the cupcakes on the table in lieu of bread or whatever you dip in your glam chowder. Just kidding, we didn't dip our cupcakes in it. That would be gross.


The following weekend I made a meal that we lovingly refer to as "Italian Dinner." The plate is divided into quadrants. It always has meetballs, pasta, greens with beans, and caesar salad. It comes with breadsticks and red wine. As uncustomizable as I have just made it sound, I changed it ever-so-slightly this time, by making the tempeh meetballs from Isa Does It, instead of my usual recipe. I also made the beans with a ton of arugula my Italian customer gave me from his garden. This time I made the sauce how his father makes it. It was on point. I was inducted into this family when I was taught the secret to his success this summer. My Italian food game is at an all-time high.


The day after I made this dinner I got really sick, and decided I am going raw. I always say I'm going raw forever after I get sick. Rt4? Compromise? Who's to say... Oh look! Almond Butter!


KZ Passing out now.

These are much more massive than the personal-sized bolis at Stuff Yer Face, but hey, making extra is a bonus of home cooking. There's beauty in leftovers.



View of mine with the cheese from the inside. Like I said, a little sloppy, but aint nobody care. Each boli is unique and beautiful in its own special way, or something to that effect.



Here's an inside view of Alex's, with no cheese. It looks a little cleaner. But as I said, he cares not about how well it photographs. He had about 6 slices of his.