Hummus

It has been awhile since I posted a recipe so in honor of my new food processor I will share my recipe for quick and easy hummus. I have been making this recipe since college and just making minor variations as different ingredients became available in my kitchen. You will notice that the base recipe does not call for tahini, this is because I went to college in a small town without a Mediterranean market so tahini was only available at the grocery store and was really expensive. Also, I use some of the liquid that the chickpeas are stored in to cut down the amount of oil needed so this recipe is fairly low-fat.


Quick & Easy Hummus

2-15oz. cans chickpeas, drained saving 1/2 cup liquid
2 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves fresh garlic (minced)
1 Tbsp Spike all-purpose seasoning (or the seasoning of your choice)
1 Tbsp Lemon juice

Put the garlic, chickpeas, and reserve liquid into food processor and process until smooth. Slowly add the oil, Spike, and lemon juice and continue processing for 30 seconds. Transfer to large container and store in refrigerator for up to 10 days. Serve as a dip, on sandwiches, or with pita chips.

Makes about a quart of hummus.

To modify this recipe you can try adding any of the following...

• kalamata olives
• roasted red peppers
• fresh herbs (basil and parsley are excellent)
• 2 Tbsp tahini
• dill pickle relish
• pine nuts
• roasted eggplant
• hot sauce
• replace half chickpeas with Black beans and add chilies
• replace Spike with seasoning blend such as Cajun, Italian, or curry
  

Go Hilltoppers!!!

I am not one for keeping up with sports, but I just read in the Washington Post that my school made it into the sweet 16!! I loved the time I spent at Western Kentucky University and you have to admit that we have to coolest mascot in the NCAA!! For more information on the history of Big Red you can visit his official page on the WKU site.

Easter

Even though both Philip and I grew up in Catholic families, neither of us really celebrates Easter; most year we don't even remember when it is. We do, however, celebrate our days off and Easter just happened to fall on one of those precious days this year so yesterday we had our first ever Easter brunch. We started the day with coffee at Third Street Cafe which was completely empty thanks to the holiday. We stayed for a few hours while Philip worked on a drawing and I worked on some top secret knitting that I will reveal in a few weeks. Around 12:30pm the church crowd started pouring in so we took that as our sign to go home and start on brunch. We made a tofu scramble with red peppers, spinach, and soyrizo, some mini hash browns and toast which we enjoyed with peppery bloody Marys. The meal was spectacular!


After brunch we played X-Men Legends II which I am really getting into. I am notoriously bad at video games so when I find one that I don't suck at I get pretty excited. After that we watched movies and read for the rest of the evening. It was a very relaxing day, something I need more of.

More family photos

It was clear from an early age that I didn't have the dedication required to be a ballerina.

Family photos

Here is an old picture of Philip's dad that Philip found when we were house sitting for his parents. Isn't the resemblance amazing?

New music

I have been going through a bit of a new music lull lately so to help fix this Philip got me some new albums. I have the new Cat Power which is okay, the new Holly Golightly which is incredible, and Franciose Hardy's first album which I really like. I managed to get everything on my iPod within a reasonable amount of time so I can listen to the albums at the store (about 80% of my music listening time happens in the store.) Philip also got Gruff Rhys' Candylion for himself which I also added to my current iPod rotation since I really liked a few of the songs on first listen. I am looking for something new, all of my new music is from people or bands that I already listen to and I would like to find something a little different so if you have any suggestions please send them my way.

Gone sledding!!

Friday night we had our last (knock on wood) winter storm resulting in about 4 inches of snow. Since the roads were still fairly drivable, Sarah and I opened the store. A few hours later we determined that our customers were planning stay inside all day so we closed the store around 3pm to go sledding instead. Philip and I went to my dad's house to borrow his fancy toboggan that never gets used, but unfortunately it was way too big to fit inside our car. We then went to his parents' house to borrow a smaller sled. While we were doing all of this, everyone decided to go to Castlewood park instead of Shilito Park. When we arrived at the park we were a little disappointed at the size of the hill, but we quickly realized that a small empty hill is way better than an overcrowded large one (plus, Philip and I later agreed that we are way too old to be hiking up a huge hill pulling a sled.) There were 10 of us sharing 3 sleds which worked out surprisingly well, we never had to wait too long for a turn. After sledding, we stripped off our snow clothes and went out to dinner at Planet Thai which is always delicious. I think that vegan tom ka soup might be better than hot cocoa after an afternoon of sledding.

After dinner, Philip and I came home and watch hours of home movies that we stole from our parents' houses earlier in the day. Philip's movies were way better than mine since most of mine were videos of performances (although my fifth grade play was kinda fun.) It ends up that my sister snatched all of the candid home movies from my dad's house so we are going to have another viewing once she sends those my way. We watched home movies until about 4am at which time I collapsed into bed and slept until 1pm on Sunday.

Sunday was the Tin Man so Philip made a big pot of chili (quite possibly his best batch yet) and we sat in front of the TV for six hours straight. I really enjoyed the series, but it was a little hard to watch straight through. I am not a huge fan of modern sci-fi so some of the elements of the story seemed pretty cheezy, but all and all it was fun. I chose to knit a sock through the series. After about 3" of the sock I decided I wanted the gauge to be tighter so I ripped the whole thing out and started over. I am really glad I did because changing the gauge also changed the striping pattern and took away the spiraling effect.

Here's my progress. The yarn is one of the Tempted hand dyes that I got for Christmas. The colorway is called Fiesta and appropriately so since there are about a million colors in this ball.

Just like my birthday

This year for my birthday I asked people to get me Amazon gift cards so that I could buy a new food processor, the food processor of my dreams. Our current food processor came to us free from a yard sale (the girl didn't know how to work it so she just let us have it) and it has served us well for five years. It is definitely the most used appliance in our kitchen and my original plan was to keep it until it died. Five years later it is still going strong, but since it is too small for our needs and since my sister needs a part-time food processor I decided this is the time to buy. I have had the gift cards since my birthday, but I made myself purge the kitchen of useless appliances and kitchenware before I let myself buy it. I finished purging and placed the order and today a shiny new Cuisinart arrived at my door. I love birthdays!!!

Kinda geeky

A couple of months ago Philip told me about this commercial for a mini-series he saw on the Sci-Fi channel. The series is called the Tin Man and it is loosely based on L. Frank Baum's books which I love. Immediately I tried to find out when it would be playing, but I guess I missed the show's running and the next and only airing listed was on March 9. This was back in early January so March 9 seemed like an eternity away, but now it is March and the 9th is on Sunday. The three-part series is going to air back to back so Philip and I will be hunkered down in front of the TV for a solid six hours. We have already planned to make pizza's that day to take care of our food needs, but I need a mindless knitting project for the event. My current project is a lace shawl for the store, but it is quiet time knitting and does not qualify for a day of tv viewing. What are your favorite mindless or general tv knitting projects? If nothing else I am thinking either a pair of long armwarmers or some socks with the snazzy sock yarn I received for Christmas or maybe I should make armwarmers with the sock yarn. Your opinions please.

Back to reality

For the last week Philip and I have been dog and house sitting for his parents while they visited his brother in Oregon. At first we thought that we would just bring Vinnie (their dog) over to our place for the week and check in on the house periodically, but then Philip's mom made us a week's worth of food so we couldn't resist a week with no cooking. It was great!! Not only did we have all of our food ready for us, we had cable tv, wi-fi, and a nice big backyard for the doggies to play in. We brought over the Wii and played Guitar Hero with the surround sound. We even bought a second guitar and had a GH night with a bunch of friends on Sunday. Even though we were still working it totally felt like a vacation, and a much needed one at that. Last night we loaded up our stuff and came back to our apartment. It was a little sad, but we put the new bedspread (thanks to Sqecial's 36% anniversary sale) on the bed and just read for a few hours with the doggies. It was a nice end to a nice vacation. We are planning another pseudo vacation in April, this time actually taking time off from work. More on that to come.

Tonight we are having a German feast including Tofurky brats, sour kraut, and some beer. I was trying to come up with an appropriate film for the event, but if I can't think of anything by the end of the day we will probably watch one of the movies from Green Cine that we haven't seen yet.

In store news, we are getting all new windows for the store. So far they replaced six of the large windows and you can already tell the difference. Our old windows are single pane, some with cracks and holes so you can guess where a lot of the heat and the AC goes. Some days in the winter you can actually see the heat escaping the windows. Our new windows are double pane and since they aren't painted shut and have screens we can open them on Spring and Fall days to enjoy the fresh air. There are 16 windows total so we still have 10 of the old windows, but hopefully they will all be replaced within the next month or so. The other big store news is that we are finally getting a new sign for the front. When we bought the original sign, we didn't really know what we were doing or who to talk to. We ended up going with the only sign place willing to come out and look at our sign to tell us what we needed. Several hundred dollars later we had a sign that was just a vinyl sticker over the light plate and only really visible at certain times of the day. We knew the sign was bad, but we were on a very tight opening budget and there was no way we could shell out for another sign. After our one-year anniversary Sarah talked to another business owner who told us where to get the good signs. Since then she has been trying to get them to come out and look at our sign so we can get an estimate. Long story short they just finished the art and they are coming to take the measurements in the next few days. Hopefully we will have new sign by the end of the month!!!