Five Recipes?

Adrian Harris of Southern Lights Bistro and Wurood Almashhadani have been thinking pretty big. After a couple of mis-connections we met at the apartment of Wurood and her husband, Tareq. Tareq and I sat down to review his resume because while he's made great progress in the American job market, he still is looking for something regular and close to his professional abilities. Meanwhile, I was treated to some wonderful chai (tea) and pastries.

After a short while, Adrian rode up. A committed cyclist, he also carried along a few potatoes and polenta, an ingredient that needed some explaining. We again reviewed the details of the presentation and the limits of the Sawtooth facility (they would not be cooking or preparing there; they'd need to prep things at Southern Lights and drive it over Saturday AM, the day of the event). Adrian got the list down after detailed talk: a polenta and sweet potato combo with an Iraqi condiment, maybe some chips with an amba dip (?), maybe a soup, a burger, and something else I can't remember, but sounded great. Oh yes — Wurood dreamed this up. A traditional Iraqi food with a purple twist.

The team had many more ideas and was eager to try them out. They figure some things might click, others maybe not. I explained they could certainly do more than the ultimately presented, but do please give us the recipes so we can publish them here.

Photo of dad taken by the kids. 

Tareq Almashhadani is a qualified translator and interpreter, holds a BA degree in English, and has administrative, commercial and retail business experience. He is working part time teaching Arabic at FaithAction House and at Language Resources. 

Photo of mom with polenta taken by goofy kids.