Tag: Food

recipes for the frugal – hummus

whbeebe

I’ve been expanding my home food preparation skills since January. This started in part when I picked up a refurbished (“renewed”) Vitamix Explorian blender Christmas 2019 from Amazon for the “paltry” sum of $180. The regular “renewed” price is currently $270, and a fully new item starts around $350 and goes up from there.

When I got the Vitamix I began to expand my recipes into soups and dips. What follows is a hummus recipe I found and tweaked for myself. This recipe uses simple, inexpensive ingredients and is almost too healthy.

Hummus

Ingredients
  • 2 cans Garbanzo Beans or Chick Peas, 16oz/can (or there-about). Drain the liquid out of one of the cans, leave the other can full of liquid.
  • 1/4 cup sesame seeds.
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice.
  • One to three garlic cloves (adjust to taste, we like three).
  • 1 tablespoon light olive oil.
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin.
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric (this isn’t really necessary, but we have our reasons below).
Directions
  • Add all the ingredients into the Vitamix container, in the ingredient order as listed. It makes no sense to measure them out on the side and then put them in the container. It also helps that when you have dry and wet ingredients, to start measuring the dry first, then the wet, especially if you’re reusing a single 1/4 measuring cup.
  • Since this is an Explorian, I would recommend setting the central dial mid-way at 6. The dial goes up to 10 (no, not 11).
  • Rest your hand on the container and then hit the pulse switch for about five seconds at a time, multiple times. As the ingredients mix, the texture will go from course to fine. You want it to reach a fine texture. Pulsing lets the mixture collapse and release any air between pulses. Keeping it on constantly will results in the mixture rising above mixing blades and the mixing will cease. You can hear it because the motor will whine up in pitch. Continue this between three and five times, or until the texture as seen through the container is smooth with no discernible specific ingredients.

Some recipes say salt to taste. I say don’t. Some canned chickpeas come with salt added, some without. If your cans state they have salt on the side, then you definitely don’t need to add more. Besides, there’s more than enough seasoning with the garlic, cumin, and turmeric.

We add turmeric to our hummus because we like the taste and because tumeric is supposed to be a natural anti-inflammatory (as is ground cumin). Considering we’re in our mid-to-late 60s with arthritis we can use all the anti-inflammatory help we can get.

The recipe produces at least 32 ounces of hummus, enough for two adults to enjoy for about a week, either as a complete meal at lunch, or as part of an evening meal. And if it doesn’t it’s simple enough to make more.

For eating, we use natural corn chips or bread loaf ends, toasted, to dip and eat. Sometimes we use bell peppers sliced long ways, sometimes carrots, sometimes celery, and my wife also likes to use cabbage leaves. Regardless of what we use it’s all good.

I hope you find this enjoyable.

interlude – aeon food court

whbeebe

During the exercise I was bussed onto the post before sunup, and was bussed back to the hotel well after sundown. The best I could do was to try to make it to the Aeon food court before the food stores closed at around 8:30pm local time. This in spite of the fact that the stores said they stayed open until 9pm.

There were a number of stores in the food court: McDonalds,  Baskin-Robbins, Mr. Donut, Subway, an udon store, a raman store, and at least two sushi stores. I actually went into one of the stores with my traveling companion and watched him (and many others) enjoy eating raw fish. I declined, coward that I am.

All the stores were served by a common eating area. The food court had an interesting requirement, at least to Western eyes like mine. There were signs in the common area that asked you politely to clean up the table you were at when you finished eating. There were several wash cloth stations in the common area that supplied pre-moistened towels for this task. I tried to remember to clean my table after I finished.

I never saw anyone else do this, but the common eating area was always clean and neat, and I never saw staff from any of the food sellers come out and clean up. I got so used to seeing a clean eating area, even the common area, that on the way back home, at a layover in Denver, someone had left a large mess of spilled popcorn and orange soda on a table in another common eating area, and I was truly shocked to see it.

Of all the American-Japanese cross-cultural food stores, the Baskin-Robbins was the most interesting. Every item in the store had a definite Japanese touch to it, and there were many very Japanese ice cream items. Yet I still recognized ice cream cakes, many of them with American cultural emblems on them. Here are a few that should be instantly recognizable.

From top to bottom you should recognize Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh, and Sully and Mike from Monsters University. All of these are the tops of Baskin-Robbins ice cream birthday cakes.

The cultural mixing that has taken/is taking place is absolutely fascinating.