recipes from afar and near

On Sunday we all went to the Lucy's Legacy exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. It was its last day here in Seattle and the place was utterly packed. We're members of the science center and had been planning to see it for months now, but between one thing and another we ended up there along with the rest of the sheep who had been contributing to the disappointing turnout.

It was an oddly schizophrenic exhibit. The Lucy aspect gets all the attention, but well over half the exhibit is about Ethiopian history and culture rather than hominid paleontology, with next to no integration of the two. Since Lucy is ostensibly why you're attending, the other part, good as it was, felt more like filler. I would have preferred two independent and more thorough treatments of the subject matter.

Anyhow, it's the cookbook that Tracey bought at the gift shop (Really? There was a gift shop?) that triggers this post. It's called Recipes from Afar and Near, and is a local publication that as far as I can tell is available only at the science center. It contains about 16 nicely varied recipes and a collection of folklore and facts. It's an appealing little book and I'm excited to try a number of the dishes. Injera, the traditional thin pancake-like bread, looks fun. Presumably the teff flour can be found at one of the 11 local Ethiopian markets listed in the book, a couple of which are pretty close.

I can easily imagine Ethiopia being one of our next grubtrotting countries.