Homemade Hummus Among Us

If you usually buy hummus at the grocery store, you may be surprised to find how easy and inexpensive this healthy snack can be to make yourself.

This Mediterranean food can be found in Greece, Turkey, and throughout the Middle East. I first tried it from the original Moosewood - the vegetarian cooking Bible at that time. More recently, it's become popular as a convenience food, and can be found or made in a wide variety of flavor combinations.

Ingredients

• 1 15-oz can (425 g) of garbanzo beans (or chickpeas)
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup tahini (pureed sesame seeds)
• 3 Tbsp lemon juice (fresh if possible - use more if Meyer lemon)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic (fresh if possible, or the equivalent amount from a jar or freezer cube)
• 1/2 parsley, chopped
• A pinch of cumin
• Salt to taste
• Options for twists on flavoring (see below)

Preparation

1. Drain the beans, peel the garlic, and roughly chop the parsley.
2. Throw all the ingredients together into a food processor (a blender will do, in a pinch).
3. Blend until creamy. This may require stopping to scrape mix off the bowl sides a few times.

Makes about half a quart.

Variations for the Adventurous
Add any one (maybe two) of these to a batch, to acheive a new taste sensation:

• Black olives (pitted, of course) or tapenade
• Roasted red peppers
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Fresh basil or a dab of pesto

Served As a Dip:
Place in a bowl, with a large plate underneath.
Surround the bowl with cut vegetables - carrots, cucumbers, bell pepper slices, jicama.
You can also offer pita bread sliced into wedges on a side plate.

Hummus as a Sandwich Spread:
Spread onto a slice of good bread, and top with an heirloom tomato layer, cucumbers, or sprouts.
Eat open-faced.

Tasting Club - Book Review

Dina Cheney's enjoyable book introduces socially-minded food lovers to a new concept: the tasting club.
Patterned after the better known book club model, members get together at each other's homes to sample one particular food at each meeting.
Dina teaches you how to host this type of gathering, including the ideal number of guests, how to set up the space, and what to serve as drinks, palette cleansers, and accompaniments.

Strong Points:

• There is very useful background provided on each of the highlighted foods (which have separated chapters).
• The how-to's for each would put any novice at ease.
• The recipes for accompaniments look tasty.
• Gorgeous photos dress up every section of the book.
• The perspective is well-educated on food, but not elitist - you need not be a 'foodie' to enjoy it.

Points to Improve:

• Stong bias for foods from New England may leave some readers at a loss.
• Local foods could be promoted much more strongly. The emphasis on imported foods serves to reinforce the 'good things only come from abroad' fallacy.

Foods Highlighted:
Wine
Chocolate
Cheese
Honey
Tea
Olive Oil
Cured Meats
Apples
Beer

My Twist:
Follow Dina's template, but highlight the best seasonal foods of your local area.

Kitchen Inventory Confessions

The very first step in Living the Savvy Life's Food chapter is to make an inventory of kitchen staples. The idea is to facilitate creating and using a master grocery list. That list helps avoid to forms of waste: overstocking items already in the fridge or cupboards, and making repeat trips to the store for forgotten items. I used to think I didn't need a written inventory, because I had a high-functioning mental one (like my now-defunct mental rolodex, with dozens of friends and family phone numbers). And to some extent that still holds true.

But attempting to inventory everything in my fridge and cupboards turned out to be less shopping preparation and more wake-up call. While our staples do rotate through the kitchen regularly, staying fresh and becoming ingredients in a range of favorite dishes, a surprising amount of space is bogarted by edible curiosities. A can of Quinault Pride canned salmon? Although it doesn't show a date, it's definitely from the last years of the last milenium. The glass jar of Moroccan Tagine simmer sauce (discontinued by Trader Joe's several years ago)? Likewise, no date. In a sense, both are on the shelf for sentimental reasons.

But our precious storage space isn't meant for keepsakes. It's there for food, serving dishes, tea cups to fancy to use everyday, and other assorted kitchen paraphenalia that later parts of the Food chapter will require me to confront. So before I complete the inventory, I'm taking on the culling step. If the Moroccan Tagine sauce smells good when I open it, we'll have a commemorative supper this week. And the Quinault can will live on as a photo only (for safety, the actual can's headed to the dump).

When the paring-down to actual staples (and a reasonable amount of extras) is done, I'll report again. I may even be brave enough then to share my master grocery list, as Melissa Tosetti does in the book.

Solar Cooking Basics and Benefits

In less than six minutes, here's the lowdown on how a solar cookers work, and why they are life-saving technology in the developing world as well as a good item to keep in your disaster kit at home.

Saute Secrets Video

The first cooking demonstration of the season focuses on fundamentals - how to bring out the best flavors of fresh, local produce.
Laura Stec, chef and co-author of Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming, teaches technique to host Angelina Le Grix, using broccoli from the farmers market.

Cool Cuisine Highlights Video

In the very first episode of Bite-size Green TV, host Angelina Le Grix interviewed Laura Stec, chef and co-author of Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming. Making a half-hour TV episode work as a webisode was challenging; but with some careful editing, the highlights of their discussion fit within the 5-minute limit recommended for web viewers. Included are some great tips for how to cook produce that's in season at the farmers' market in the winter.


Next webisode: chef Laura demonstrates how to bring out the true flavors of fresh, local vegetables.

Diet for a Small Planet

When it first came out in 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet was revolutionary, even a touch heretical. Americans had been 'going big or going home' in food production, institutionalizing the factory farm system, since the end of World War II. We were maximizing efficiency and exporting prosperity. Having plenty of meat was more American than apple pie.

How dare this woman come along and challenge our hard-earned standard of living? Accuse us of 'gross waste' and environmental destruction?  Not only suggest that we could enjoy a healthier, more sustainable way of eating, but explain why, and how, and provide recipes?

Apparently readers and eaters were hungry for the message, because the book became a best seller, now in its 20th edition. The newest version is available from Lappe's non-profit Small Planet Institute.

A dog-eared copy of the 1975 edition, and the companion book Recipes for a Small Planet, are available from me, for free, as part of my Healthy Food Books Giveaway. If you want them, speak up soon!