Thursday, October 30, 2008

Some Hummus (The "I Made It Myself" Kind)

I wrote of a recent Whole Foods excursion recently, when I found myself buying only snacks. Really expensive snacks. Delicious but exorbitant snacks.

I love snacking. It's the best part about the "don't eat big meals, just graze all day" kind of diet. But I don't love spending ridiculous amounts of money on snacks.

When I went back to Whole Foods two days ago, I thought to myself, "What's a good snack that I can make myself?" I had already done homemade salsa and homemade tortilla chips earlier in October (with fresh, self-picked tomatoes). What else could I... hummus!

Hummus. What could be easier? Chickpeas, tahini, blend, serve. I bought the ingredients plus garlic and prepared for greatness.

Some Hummus

1 15-ounce can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans
some raw tahini
some apple cider vinegar
some lemon juice
some garlic (8 cloves)
some ground cumin
some olive oil

(I used a blender. You people with food processors, I hope you know how lucky you are.)
  1. Drain can of liquid, saving the liquid in a cup.
  2. Put about half the can of chickpeas into the blender.
  3. Pour a little of that bean juice from the can into the blender.
  4. Glug some apple cider vinegar into the blender.
  5. Put 2-3 spoonfuls of well-stirred tahini in blender.
  6. Cover top of stuff in blender with a dusting of cumin.
  7. Mash garlic cloves, or dice up into little pieces. Add half to blender.
  8. Blend.
  9. Add the olive oil that you forgot. Blend more.
  10. It's probably too thick to blend properly. Dump it into a bowl.
  11. Do the same thing over again, but this time add lemon juice instead of the vinegar, since you just found it in the back of the fridge. Add a little more bean juice, too, to make it blendable.
  12. Aww yeah, it's blending now.
  13. Spoon the thick first batch into the second batch and blend on high.
  14. Add more cumin because you don't know if it's too bland or not.
  15. (That was a little too much cumin, but you'll find that out later.)
  16. Blend again. Aww, fudge, it's not blending any more.
  17. Oh well, it's done anyway.
  18. Spatula it out into a bowl.
  19. Make a little hole in the center of the hummus and pour a little olive oil in. Serve.
Some parts were wayyyy too cumin-y. But on the whole, this turned out really well. And I now have a ton of hummus. Well, actually, about the amount of 4 Trader Joe's hummus containers. I will make again.

1 comment:

Hatandcoat said...

I read recently that grazing is a great short term solution, but that's it. Long term it's bad. I'll get more details and get back to you.