Hummus Quesadilla

The pinto beans were a bit elderly and not quite feeling up to being eaten, so the hummus bravely offered up itself. The result was so delicious I couldn't do anything else while I ate but taste.

Spread a generous layer of hummus on a (whole wheat, what else?) tortilla, then cover with lots of (red leaf) lettuce, tomato slices, carrot slivers (when this guy isn't busy trying to kill me, it does a great job with the carrots), and hunks of sharp cheddar. You gently fold it in half and microwave until the cheese is quite melty.

Devour distractionless. :)

Hummus & Veggie Sandwhich

It was the perfect Sunday lunch. It was also the messiest sandwich I have eaten in my entire life. (Not that I let that keep me from reading while I ate it!) It also reaffirmed my belief that the key to the perfect hummus & veggie sandwich is hot hummus on crusty bread. If your bread isn't crusty and your hummus isn't hot, just put the whole thing in a panini press, which will make it also compressed enough to not break your jaw eating it.

I used the Italian bread because I was out of wheat (I'm supposed to make more this afternoon but am getting tired of being sweaty...) and stuck it in a 500 degree oven for 5-7 minutes to try to toast a bit. Next time I'm toasting it with olive oil in a frying pan (like how you make grilled cheese) and hopefully that'll work better. In assembly, you use the hummus to hold down the garlic sprouts and shredded (I gleefully recently discovered how well the big round holes on the cheese grater work for shredding baby carrots!) carrots. Then you sandwich the tomato slices in the lettuce to keep them from soggifying the bread. I recommend making this kind over overstuffed un-panini-pressed sandwich with fresh, strong bread that won't fall apart.

Just like I wanted to say last week that there's nothing like cleaning up the homemade sauce on your plate with homemade bread, there's REALLY nothing like a hummus and veggie sandwich on homemade bread, with homemade hummus, and homegrown veggies. Someone please make my tomato plants hurry up!

Hummus

I finally made hummus! Here's to many yummy hummus & veggie sandwiches, oh and, following recipes when you're making something for the first time.

I used the recipe that had 835 reviews, and 25.3k saves on allrecipes.com. It called for 2 c drained garbanzos, 0.33 c tahini, 0.25 c lemon juice, 1 tsp salt, 2 cloves of garlic, and 1 tbsp olive oil. For the tanini, lemon juice, and garlic, use less to start; it's always easier to add than to subtract. I learned the hard way that tahini is bitter, and added up adding a pinch of sugar to fix things.

Humble Pie

For some, the mediocrity of Friday Night Experiments would be enough to call off Saturday Afternoon Experiments, but life lived with that mindset isn't very interesting. For instance, making BIG mistakes teaches us things, like how nice nonstick cookie sheets are!

Recipe for humble pie: Great aspirations. Three zucchini sliced very, very thin. Put the slices in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then bake at 450 for half an hour. Have fun scrubbing the carbon-covered cookie sheets!

Once again I am reminded that it is a gift when an idea or recipe comes out the way I want it to, not something to be taken for granted. The first big lesson of this was the three attempts at making kiwi gelato (I have since given up). The Poet Mraz reminds us all how blessed we are to even have food; the ThankfulFor blog reminds us how blessed we are to hear. Not to pretend like I own a soapbox, but I think that agriculture should be an integral part of everyone's formal education; I think gratitude should have a much larger role in our lives.

Question for readers: how does one fix tasteless hummus? Is the tahini really that necessary?