my new hummus recipe (or how to seriously disappoint someone in the mood for guacamole)

Ever since my grandma bought me a Magic Bullet Blender in college, I've been trying to make my own hummus, with varying degrees of success. I've tried a few recipes and modifications, but the best recipe came to me printed on the side of my cumin, which happens to be the secret ingredient in delicious hummus (and delicious everything else--cumin is so delicious it should have its own blog post [did you know that cumin is one of the most widely used spices in the world, yet not used much in the united states?...]). Here is the basic recipe:

Classic Hummus
from McCormick Ground Cumin shaker
Drain 1 can (15 0z.) chickpeas, reserving 1/4 cup liquid. Place chickpeas in food processor with 1 clove garlic, 1 T lemon juice, 1 t. ground cumin, and 1/4 t. each ground red pepper and salt. Cover. Process until smooth, adding reserved liquid until desired consistency. Serve with pita chips.

One pretty big omission from this recipe is olive oil. I don't add the chickpea liquid, and instead drizzle enough oil into the blender that it blends. This time I also chopped up the remains of a bag of spinach I had, and added two spoonfuls of flax seed as a substitute for tahini. The result looks amazingly like guacamole and tastes like delicious hummus. So good!

irrational number/dessert day!

Happy pi day everyone!
Recipe

nickel for Charlie

A few months ago, Mr. P and I found our first geocache in the woods near Fresh Pond. Geocaching is great because sometimes you need an excuse to go outside and enjoy a beautiful day, or even a day that is just cold and not super-duper cold. On Sunday we revisited one that had given us grief in the past--we thought we were at the cache site, but actually we were across the street! And even once we crossed the street, we spent a good amount of time poking around before we were able to find the 'magnetic micro.'