This week we learned all about Ethiopian culture, music, and food right from our home! We feasted on injera and learned some super fun new dance moves. 

Our goal is not only to inspire our children to appreciate different cultures, but we also must support local businesses, particularly those founded by immigrants. Indianapolis is home to some fantastic international cuisine, and this week’s decision to carry out from Abyssinia Ethiopian restaurant proves that point. 

Ethiopian Culture and Fun Facts: You’ll Never Guess What Year You’re In!

Ethiopia is a gorgeous country, landlocked inside the horn of Africa, sharing borders with Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan. It is home to the oldest preserved human, “Lucy,” who was in the Great Rift Valley over 3 million years ago. Almost every human being can trace its heritage to Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a place unto itself. It is protected by its people and its heritage, making Ethiopian culture rich and diverse. Ethiopia is the only African nation to have never been colonized. It twice battled Italy’s invasions in 1935 and 1941. Speaking of dates, it has its own calendar and time. Ethiopians have 13 months in a year, and Sunrise starts the 12-hour clock, so this week’s Worldly Wednesday started on the 16th day of the 6th month, 2014, at 10 o’clock. 

Ethiopia is home to 80 distinct cultures, and a variety of languages, with Ahmaric being its top language. Christianity as its primary religion, followed by Islam. Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Aftrica, and the 12th most populated in the world.  It is home to 9 World Heritage Sites: Askum, Fasil Ghebbi, Harar Jugol, Konso, Awash, Rock-Hewn Churches, Simien National Park, and Tiya. All that is packed inside a relatively small, lush, and mountainous region.

Ethiopia might have been the most fun-fact-friendly country (say that 5 times fast) that we’ve done yet! There are so many interesting things to learn about this place. 

• Over half of Africa’s mountains are in Ethiopia.
• The first African Olympic Gold Medalist, Abebe Bikila, is from Ethiopia.
• Ethiopia was founded in 980 BC. 
• Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia. The story has it that a goat herder found his goats very energetic after they ate coffee beans, and the rest is history.
• Learn more fun facts from Big 7 Travel 

Credit: Dame Africa

Ethiopian Music: Dance Your Shoulders Off!

There were so many Ethiopian playlists to choose from this week!  Alli listened to several through the day to figure out which would be best for dinner. 

• Ethiopian Jazz and Ethiopian Coffee are great for a relaxed, chill vibe – and of course, a steaming cup of Ethiopian coffee.
• Top Ethiopian Music 2022 is for all the hits! Andrew heard a few of these songs while he was picking up the food at Abysinnia, and then again when he came home and Alli had this playlist going. 

If you’re following along from home, I encourage you to play some Ethiopian music, whether it’s these playlists or a YouTube channel.  It really helps put you in the Ethiopian mindset while preparing or eating the meal.

Ethiopian Foods: A Shared Meal 

Ethiopians eat a variety of vegetables and spiced meats.  Injera is the famous sponge-like flatbread that Ethiopians eat with many meals, with spiced vegetables and meats on top or on the side.  Typically, Ethiopians eat with their right hand, taking a piece of injera and scooping up sides with that piece. We also noticed while watching videos that it is common to feed a friend a bite to eat. We loved how the Ethiopian food and Ethiopian culture go hand in hand. These injera dishes are beautiful, we couldn’t get enough of the pictures: 

Credit: The Perennial Palate

Doro wat is considered the national dish, and is traditionally served at all Ethiopian holiday meals.  Doro wat is a berberre-spiced chicken stew, with whole boiled eggs. This would definitely have been one we tried cooking had we been cooking from home – check out this recipe from The Daring Gourmet if you want to try it for yourself! 

Credit: The Daring Gourmet

Takeout From Abysinnia Ethiopian Restaurant

There were so many amazing foods that we could have made at home this week – but we are so lucky to have a few Ethiopian food options near to us here in Indianapolis, so we decided to order takeout this week.  For our fellow Hoosier followers, and anyone who gets a chance to visit this amazing city, please check out Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant.

There are actually several other highly-rated Ethiopian restaurants around the Indy area that we will be visiting for a coffee ritual soon as well: 

• Lete’s Injera and Cafe 
• Axum Ethiopian Restaurant 
• St. Yared Ethiopian Cuisine and Coffeehaus
• Queen Sheba Ethiopian Catering 

Credit: Abysinnia Ethiopian Restaurant

Andrew went to pick up carry out from Abysinnia on his way home from work.  He entered through a small door, but there was so much on the other side. A host, a young man in his mid-20s, stood in the middle of the room. Andrew approached, told him he was there for a pick up. The host clarified a few points of the order (and wound up with way more injera than expected), and then he moved on to work the room full of regulars. Indianapolis is no mean city, and it makes us proud that expatriates and immigrants can find a tiny sliver of home buried in the Midwest. 

The restaurant featured two huge TVs, but back toward the kitchen was a small alcove dedicated to the Ethiopian coffee ritual.  One TV was blaring Ethiopian music videos, upbeat and lively music.  The other screen, the silent one that everyone was watching, played Manchester United v Atletico Madrid champions league game. Patrons celebrated as Man U scored the game-tying goal. 

Back at Home

We hosted Alli’s family for this Wednesday’s small feast, and as such, ordered far more food than we needed. Many Ethiopians are followers of the Coptic Orthodox Church, which dictates that their members do not eat meat or dairy products on fasting days, including most Wednesdays and Fridays, to be forgiven for sins committed throughout the year.  In trying to respect Ethiopian customs, we ordered all vegetarian dishes from Abysinnia. 

The vegetarian combo plate included:

• Quosta – chopped spinach in garlic and onion sauce
• Yesimir wett – red lentils in berberre (spicy onion) sauce
• Gommen – collard greens in garlic and onion sauce
• Tike Gommen – cabbage and carrots in garlic and onion sauce
• Dinich Alecha – potatoes and carrots in garlic and onion sauce
• Atakilt Wett – green beans and carrots in garlic and onion sauce

Beautiful, right?  And of course – tons and tons of Injera, an Ethiopian sour flatbread. Neil loved this so much he kept eating it straight off his plate:

Please ignore the crown (fairy tale day at daycare) and the fact that he would only add rice to his Injera.  We are so lucky that our kids try so many new things, but there are certain days when the only thing they will put in their mouths are carbs. He eventually ate some dinich alecha (potatoes) and couldn’t get enough of the injera, we celebrate small victories over here.  

We swayed Alli’s dad to the cause as well. We could certainly sense his skepticism as I walked in with bags of floppy brown flatbread and a litany of sauces. By the end of the evening he was commenting on how unexpectedly great the food was. All it took was him giving it a shot, and the world has 7 more injera-lovers among it. It just takes open hearts and open minds. 

Ethiopian Culture and Travel Videos

Wow, we had some amazing video content this week.  Our family’s favorite part of this special evening was learning all of the amazing Ethiopian dance moves, and taking a deep dive into Ethiopian Culture.  

Eskista is a traditional Ethiopian dance, from the Amhara ethnic group, which consists of an intense shoulder movement (that none of us could do correctly, but we tried).  

Eskista dance

Vids:

An Ethiopian Expedition: Learn All About Ethiopia!  This was our favorite!! So many fun, interesting facts, many of which you’ve already learned if you’ve read this full post, but you get a little pop quiz at the beginning of this video to see if you were paying attention to your reading here!  This features so many different people from around Ethiopia, fun facts, cultural tidbits, and more. 

All about Ethiopia (Documentary for kids) This documentary about Ethiopia is by kids, for kids (and adults!).  Fun to learn about a country through a kid’s eyes. 

Ethiokids, Ethiopian American kids, Learn Amharic, Learn to name your body in Amharic Who doesn’t want to watch some adorable Ethiopian kids singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” in both English and Amharic? 

This week we traveled to the Indian Ocean to learn more about Madagascar’s culture and traditions. Neil is getting really good at his spin-the-globe job, and has certainly delivered on some fantastic locations. Not saying there are duds out there, but he’s given us a really good streak. That said, our honest expectations were that we would enjoy the videos more than the food. But we were ready to give this Madagascar recipe the best shot we could manage. We were completely blown away by Madagascar’s national dish, Romazava, which is now a part of our day-to-day rotation.

More than the Cartoon: Masdagascar Culture and Fun Facts

Madagascar is a gorgeous and fascinating place. Madagascar is a large island that broke off the eastern shore of Africa 88 million years ago. It is the fourth-largest island in the world. It is a stew of cultures, but has maintained a distinct identity. Fast forward to the video we watched about locals bridging the divide between multiple heritages. and opting to focus on their Malagasy roots over their Western European or Indonesian. These cultures came from its uniquely situated location. It is a hub, or station, among major sea-faring routes, particularly before routes like the Suez Canal opened.

This blend of Africa and Asia is absolutely beautiful. Much of Madagascar’s culture and history comes from the East rather than the West. Historians say that human settlement began with Austronesian peoples, even though Africa’s Cradle of Humankind is next door.  

Its flora and fauna are distinctly Malagasy as well. More than 80% of its plants are found nowhere else in the world. Madagascar is home to 50% of the world’s chameleon population, and 100% of the world’s lemur population. Lemurs are sacred in Madagascar.

Here are a few other fun and interesting facts we learned about Madagascar’s culture:

• The people of Madagascar are called ”Malagasies”
• Famadihana is the funeral tradition, also known as the turning of the bones, in which ancestors corpses are redressed in fresh cloth, and their names rewritten on the cloth so they are always remembered
• Madagascar was once a haven for pirates who used the island as a hideout
• Find a few other interesting Madagascar cultural traditions at The Culture Trip

All this is a recipe for a place like no other. We were lucky to get this spin so early in our process.  

Let the Party Begin: Madagascar Music

Queue up the Malagasy music! Madagascar Music – playlist by Pan African Music | Spotify

As we cooked, we listened to a playlist on Spotify simply titled “Madagascar Music.”    We had to root through a lot of the movie soundtrack playlist before finding something this time, but the one we found really hit the spot.  It was energetic enough that we danced with the kids around the kitchen, but at the same time calm enough to play during dinner.  It’s 25 songs which seems like the perfect amount for a playlist – enough for a long dinner or drive, but not overwhelming.  Highly recommend. 

Scouring the International Market for Madagascar Foods

We went to a local international market this week to explore. It looked like it was African-themed, but information online was sparse. We needed to give it a shot in person. We were hopeful to find a few of the more exotic ingredients common to Madagascar culture. This included spices like Grains of Paradise and cardamom, as well as fresh foods like tamarind, guava, anamamy greens and paracress greens. 

None of those ingredients were in the store, of course it is very difficult to get fresh fruits and vegetables imported across the globe. One of the challenging things about Midwest winters is the lack of access to a lot of fresh fruits and veggies. However, we were excited to find a big bag of cassava flour, a popular staple for African cooking. And tons and tons of varieties of rice. Lots of smoked fish. And multiple bags of plantain chips that may or may not have been finished by the time we drove home.  We’re super excited to have found this little market, it’s close to the boys’ daycare so we can easily pop by any day, especially when we get a Caribbean spin. 

You could definitely smell the fish, Neil’s reaction was “it’s stinky in here!” Thankfully I don’t think anyone heard him. These kids just don’t hold back, man. 

Entree: Madagascar Romazava

We decided to make the national dish of Madagascar culture, which is called Romazava.  It’s a stew made of meat and greens. This Romazava recipe was incredibly easy to make, and we had most of the ingredients in our pantry already.  It’s going to become a go-to in this household, as we’re all about the one pot meal around here.  Go to the recipe to learn more, but this is seriously it: brown the beef, dump a can of diced tomatoes, add some ginger and garlic, let simmer for 30 minutes, add chicken and pork, simmer for 15 more, add greens, simmer for 10 more.  That’s it, folks.  We cooked some brown rice in the instant pot on the side at the same time.  The whole process took about an hour, but was very hands off.  Fun fact, the Malagasy love rice – just like our kids – and its rice consumption is the highest per capita in any area outside Asia. 

This stew also made Alli feel very nostalgic—it tastes so much like her Grandma’s famous vegetable soup (which is a hilarious title given that it consists of 80% beef, 10% tomatoes and another 10% vegetables thrown in for good measure).  This one, like grandma’s vegetable stew, really needs the meat though—it makes it.  It’s a really great, hearty meal for a cold winter day.  

Dessert: Malagasy Cake

The Romazava was perfect for today as our entire state (Indiana) is getting ready to go into hunker down mode, as a winter storm is a’brewin.  Most schools have preemptively closed for this expected snow and ice storm, and of course, the crazies turned out in droves at Target and Meijer to buy everything in sight.  We needed some more bananas for this Malagasy cake recipe, so Alli made a quick Target run this morning and the shelves were EMPTY.  One, sad, brown, lonely banana sat on the shelf.  

We did actually have two super ripe bananas left in the fridge, so we ended up making a half batch of this cake which was perfect for four people.  Neil would argue otherwise, since he finished his in about 30 seconds flat and then slumped onto the ground in protest when we said we were all out. What a hard life. 

The Malagasy cake turned out really well, but was a little more of a pudding consistency.  Maybe somewhere between a banana bread and banana pudding.  A brudding, if you will.  The pictures in the reviews of this recipe looked much more like a cake consistency than ours, ours was not nearly as pretty. But who cares, because we loved the flavor.  This actually reminded us of the cake we made for our St. Helena night, but that was made with canned pumpkin instead. It’s been fun on this journey to see how similar some recipes and ingredients can be even on different sides of a continent.

Snuggle Up: Madagascar Culture and Travel Videos

We’d like to point out that the obvious choice here for a video is Madagascar, especially if you’re doing this with kids.  However, our children are in the phase of life where they have 3 movies they’ve watch 864 times, and will not accept the idea that we turn on any other kids movie.  So instead we skipped through these videos on YouTube.

Madagascar 4K – Drone – Travel Video This video is cool drone footage over Madagascar’s land. FYI, this has only music in the background, but its nice if you want to zen out on the couch. You may not enjoy watching hours of drone footage like Andrew does, so this is just a 4-minute intro for you.

Madagascar (Documentary, Discovery, History) This is a full hour long documentary. If you want a quick overview, we really enjoyed the first 10 minutes or so, and it gave us a really good perspective on Madagascar culture.

Anthony Bourdain – Madagascar We’re lucky when we land on a Parts Unknown episode for one of our weekly spins. RIP Anthony.

Cooking in Madagascar. A traditional Malagasy dinner. We loved the music in this one and the brief rundown of Malagasy cuisine.

History of Madagascar This is the intense history version, we like to trick our kids into learning. This was a good overview of the basic history of Madagascar.

5K Madagascar Wildlife – Incredible Nature and Wildlife of Madagascar – 4 HOURS For those brave souls more like Andrew, who can’t get enough of these drone footage videos. This might hold you over for a really long time. 

This week we visited Portugal. We made these wonderful pasteis de nata to cap off one of the best Worldly Wednesday meals we’ve had in a very long time. Even Neil asked for seconds on his Portugese Fisherman’s Stew. 

We were really excited for this one, as you can probably tell from our overachieving menu. We have a friend from Spain, and he suggested these pastries. I have a secret ambition to be a really good baker – sometime I’ll tell you all about the time I volunteered to make 5 pies for the first Thanksgiving I attended with my in-laws (then my boyfriend’s parents), and I had never made a pie before.  So when I saw these pastries, I knew I had to get my hands on them and totally disappoint myself once again (just kidding, the pastries were incredible)

Fun Facts about Portugal

Portugal is situated on the westernmost shore of Europe, and the entire country orients itself toward the sea with Lisbon and Porto stacked on the North Atlantic shore. Portugal is home to the world’s longest running bookstore, the Bertrand Bookstore, which was established in Lisbon in 1732 Often overlooked in our history classes, this nation has been around since Ancient times, notably due to its mastery of the ocean. This kind of history gets me pretty jazzed, thinking of Ken Follett-style stories of Portugual wrestling back its nationhood in 1640 from Spain.

In researching Portugal, we found that it owes much of its early development and to its ability to preserve cod by salting and drying it so it can be available on vast sea-explorations starting in the 14th Century. This bacalhau is a mainstay of Portugese culture. We weren’t so sure the kids would be interested in it, and Everlywell declared Andrew super-sensitive to cod, so we opted for the next best sea-faring recipe, Leite’s Culinaria’s Fisherman Stew. Speaking of kids, if you’re looking to have one in Portugal, apparently you may only select from a list of 80 names – and to deviate from this list constitutes child abuse. Fascinating. 

It’s a Dinner Party!

Also, this was our first Worldly Wednesday dinner party.  Do you guys also say dinner party when you have one guest over for dinner? Just us? 

My friend came prepared with lots of fun Portugal facts for dinner, which was a nice treat for us.  She told us fun facts that we immediately forgot.

Now, it was a bit hard to pay attention to her, with Sam, my two year old, getting out of his booster seat every 30 seconds to grab a piece of cheese (not on the menu, Sam), and Neil chasing our puppy Pepper around the table.  But the facts were a very nice thought. 

Either way, we tried to this one up right.  And it turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag.  Half of it was fabulous, the other half was fine but not great, and the kids were absolute chaos. 

We fell in love with the scenery and views of the streets, and this is definitely a place we’d love to visit in person. Instead, we opt for the next best thing as we travel from home!

Getting Started

Get yourself in the mood with one of these two playlists. Give yourself a bit of extra time to cook these meals, and this might be one for Worldly Wednesday on a Saturday (don’t worry, we won’t tell!). Easy Listening: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3DRL7wXMQcnfaHd6eW1ILL?si=255f53e87fed4def

Or, Portugese Top Hits – for, well, the hits https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sSDwZCMnILlhfHnK0pxaW

Once the evening hit, having done some of the prep work over lunch (see below), I threw on this lovely Portugese cafe playlist – we highly recommend it while cooking, it made me feel like I was in some kind of rom com with Meryl Streep making pastries in my beautiful Nancy Meyers-styled Portugese bakery.  Maybe I just stole the plot of It’s Complicated with a Portugese twist, but that’s a movie we would watch. 

Ahh, but there I was, relaxing, cooking, dreaming of her rom com inspired life, and in comes Andrew and the two little Tasmanian devils, throwing coats and shoes wherever they land as they are running through the house, pulling things down from the walls, screaming. They’re cute.  I tried to keep calm and continue to making dinner, but of course, the timeline fell apart and we ate dinner about an hour later than intended. 

Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. Focus on dessert first, making the dough/base for the pasteis de nata. You’ll thank us later. Then get things ready to go on the rice dish, maybe starting at about the same time you do the stew. Hopefully you have enough stove space! Here are the recipes broken down: 

If we were to do this all over, we would prep the dough and the veggies early in the day or even the night before.  We would also prep the custard for the pastries earlier in the day, and get those all ready to go in the oven.   Then we would start about an hour and a half before I wanted to serve dinner and go in this order: 1) put the potatoes in the oven, 2) start the rice, and 3) start the stew.  

The version of the pasteis de nata recipe had approximately 335 steps of rolling, buttering, folding, and rerolling.  But I am telling you, it was WORTH IT.  These pastries were one of the best things I’ve ever made in my life.  Maybe even one of top things I’ve eaten, ever.   I really don’t think I’ve ever been this proud of myself, you guys.  And I won my 5th grade spelling bee.  So, yeah. 

Dessert first: Pasteis de Nata

Pasteis de nata (custard tarts) – mix of two: 

• Filling from this:  https://spanishsabores.com/pasteis-de-nata-recipe/
• Dough from this: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/269064/portuguese-custard-tarts-pasteis-de-nata/

I prepped a lot of the meal during lunch break because she knew it would take a lot of time.  I started by skimming all of the recipes and figuring out how much prep I could do early, and then making a bit of a timeline for the evening for when I needed to start cooking each menu item. 

First, the dough for the pastries.  If you’re going to make your own dough, you can do it the night before.  It was definitely the most time consuming part of this meal.  But man, it was some deliciously flaky, buttery dough. 

Them: “Roll the dough into a square.” 

Me:

Them: “Roll the dough into a rectangle”

Me:

Does anyone actually know how to roll a ball of dough into a square? Or is that just something they put in recipes to make you feel inadequate?  Either way, I think my hourglass figured friends would say this is the better shape.

But whatever, Holy Custard Tart! This blend of recipes was absolutely incredible. This decadent dessert was the perfect ending to our first Worldly Wednesday Dinner Party, and will certainly be the lasting memory we have from this evening. We’’ve never baked something at such a high temperature, but goodness it was perfect. We could not speak highly enough about this dessert. 

Entree: Portuguese Fisherman’s Stew

Portuguese Fisherman’s stew https://leitesculinaria.com/7678/recipes-portuguese-fishermans-stew.html

This dish was fantastic, though the ingredients were a bit pricier than we had planned. It asked for multiple types of good seafood, as well as Saffron! Neil was really interested in the cooked mussels, and actually enjoyed opening the shell a bit more to get to the meat inside.

I LOVED this stew.  It was not really complicated at all – it just required a lot of pretty fancy ingredients.  So again I admit to you, dear reader, and to the people of Portugal that I skipped the cod and the clams.  There are good reasons, so please just hear me out.  I did learn in my research that the national food of Portugal is Bacalhau, which is dried and salted codfish, that can be prepared and served in different ways. I also learned an interesting fact from my friend that the Portugese were some of the most successful early explorers of the world because they figured out how to salt-cure cod, and it allowed them to stay out on their boats voyaging for much longer than others and not return home for food.  Cool, right? 

So the reason I did not use cod in this recipe is that Andrew is allergic.  We try to be as authentic as possible, but not to the detriment of our health and safety.  And the clams, maybe not as great of an excuse, but the store didn’t have any left, and I already felt a little scammed from the price of the mussels, sausage, and saffron threads.  

Saffron!? What is this, gold?

A note about saffron threads: WHAT?! Why are they so expensive? 

Andrew and I were a bit perplexed by the mussels.  I bought them from the butcher counter at our local grocery store, and didn’t think to ask a lot of questions.  The recipe said to “scrub and debeard the mussels” and that’s when I thought “maybe I’m in over my head here.” 

But it didn’t appear that these mussels actually had beards, so we ran some water over them, scrubbed a bit, and threw them in the stew.  They opened up just like the recipe said they would and they turned out to be SO good.  I love trying something new like that and it works out – that doesn’t happen to me often (although see my bragging about the pastries later in this post, and you will probably not believe me. But trust me, this was a weird night).  

Other than that, the stew is really easy, you essentially just throw everything into the same pot! Love a one-pot meal.  I will absolutely be adding this stew to our go-to recipes – but maybe trying with canned clams, or a variety of different seafoods, to keep it more affordable. 

Side 1: Arroz de Tomate

Arroz de Tomate (Tomato rice): https://foodandjourneys.net/portuguese-tomato-rice-arroz-de-tomate/

We only had sweet sticky rice and long grain brown rice on hand that day, so we opted for brown rice which requires a little bit longer cook time than the recipe calls for. We really mistimed this and only started cooking it when the stew was almost done. So next time, we’ll plan ahead. The flavors were fantastic though the rice was chewier than we would have wanted (but again, our fault, not the recipe’s). 

Also, I will say one thing here that will probably get me banned from Portugal forever – but I did not use fresh tomatoes for the Arroz tomate.  There was this whole thing where we needed tomatoes for three different recipes this week, and I miscalculated when buying groceries, and suddenly I had no fresh tomatoes.  So I… I…. I used canned.  I’m sorry!!!  Ok?! I did it.  And I admit, everyone is correct, fresh would have been way better.  BUT.  This is my life.  Sometimes we don’t have fresh tomatoes, and I spent a billion hours rolling dough, and I am going to be okay with canned.  

After these major mistakes, this recipe included the biggest failure of the night. I started it WAY too late.  I also already mentioned that I used canned tomatoes – and the problem is that I was rushing too much to drain them, but it added a lot of extra liquid that had to boil off, so it took longer than expected.  It actually turned out pretty well, and the flavor of the rice was fabulous, but just needed to be started sooner.  

Side 2: Batatas a Murro

Batatas a Murro (Smashed potatoes) https://leitesculinaria.com/356965/recipes-portuguese-smashed-potatoes-batatas-murro.html

This dish was so simple and delicious. They are essentially baked, lightly squished, garlic fingerling potatoes. We’re definitely going to incorporate this dish into our everyday cooking. Perfectly cooked and perfectly flavored. Parabens to the Portugese for this one!

Everything for the potatoes were completely prepped at lunchtime, so all I had to do was throw them in the oven for an hour.  They were delicious but I actually wish they got a bit crispier – so next time I would probably broil for a couple minutes there at the end.  I also thought Neil, my four year old, would be much more into smashing the potatoes at the end.  I think he thought we were hurting their little potato feelings and kept asking “but why are we smashing them mom?”  The kid has a soft spot for spuds. 

In all, this is a pretty extravagant dinner. It required a lot of ingredients and time.  But man, it was fabulous. Would be great for a fancier date night or dinner party.  If it’s just for a casual night, maybe pick one or two of these things to do at a time. 

The After-Dinner Entertainment

Videos: 

From there, we plopped down on the couch to watch some YouTube. I’m a sucker for high-quality drone footage, so of course that’s what we’re queuing up on the Worldly Wednesday – Portugal page. I loved the shore and the gorgeous rolling hills:

Portugal 4K – Scenic Relaxation Film With Calming Music

We watched a super cool video that just made you feel like you were walking through the streets of Porto, Portugal.  My friend thought that people probably walked on the treadmill and watched something like this, which is brilliant:

4K City Walk. Porto, Portugal

And finally, here’s a quick video of a family doing the real thing:
Family Friendly things to do in Lisbon, Portugal (Tram 28, Tuk Tuk Tour, Timeout Market, Cascais)

In all, we loved every second of this evening. Please comment for any notes or suggestions, but honestly this is one that we think we did right, especially if you make some of the modifications that will make this a truly memorable cultural feast.