Erica's Recession Hummus

It's the most wonderful, and shocking, time of the year where Erica posts one of her own recipes: Recession Hummus.

The Great Recession has made a big impact on the way I purchase and consume hummus. Sabra is my personal grocery store pre-made hummus favorite, with their offbeat but delicious flavor combos. But, at $4+ per container, it's just not worth it. I'm going to tell you how I sucked it up, bought a $6 jar of tahini (which will, no joke, probably last you 50+ batches of hummus!), and rocked my own hummus flavors at a deep discount.

This is one of those recipes where you can use whatever is in your refrigerator that you feel would be delicious in hummus. Rather than give you exact quantities, you should just use the quantity of each ingredient that:

1) Makes the hummus taste good

and

2) Creates the typical consistency of hummus

You can be creative here, but I chose to use the following:

1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes (if you don't use sundried tomatoes, you can use olives, hot peppers, roasted red peppers, etc. If the ingredient that you add is not inherently salty, add salt to taste)

1 small can of chick peas ($.99)

1 tablespoon of tahini (or more if you like the taste)

1 garlic clove

Lemon juice to taste

Water to the appropriate consistency (add small pours at a time!)

Black pepper to taste

About 1 tbsp olive oil (trying to keep it light, but you can add more if you aren't concerned about fat content...)

Throw all of the ingredients into a food processor or blender. If the hummus is too thick, add a tiny bit of water (but not too much - no one likes runny hummus!)

The total cost of this hummus is waaaaay less than $4 -- especially if you have most of this stuff already in your house. A small lemon juice is about a dollar and will last for many, many batches!

Enjoy!

THE LAST OF THE APPLES!!

The rest of the apples had been sitting in the fridge for days, and I felt powerless against them. But, not one to roll over and die like that, today I decided to battle the rest of the apples like Steven Segal in that movie where he goes into a coma for nine years, but emerges to kick ass and take names. 

John and I and some of our friends spent the morning running a 5k in the freezing rain, which made me feel motivated to be a little healthier. Then I took down a diner breakfast at Uncommon Ground in Watertown that three people could probably split. (It was worth it.)

Anyway, the point of my story is that I searched the internet for a (at least quasi) healthy apple recipe that would use up the rest of our crop. I found this Low Fat Apple Bread recipe online, and luckily I had all of the ingredients on hand. (I made a cup of fresh, unsweetened apple sauce by cooking down about 3 apples with some water). Instead of making a single loaf, I decided to portion them out into muffins. My coworkers will hopefully help me eat these this week.

Remember how I said John refused to let me throw away the apple cores? (Or peels, for that matter?) Today, I have to say he took a page from Alton Brown's book and decided to make apple pectin (which can be used to thicken the filling for apple pies, make jelly, or create fruit-based sauces for meat dishes). He basically boiled all the cores and peels in a giant pot for an hour or so, and I'm assuming he'll strain out the solids. We'll freeze the remnants and probably use it around Thanksgiving. Here's a bit more about pectin. It's also pictured in the first photo of this post. If you can't tell that the second photo is the muffins, I have no words.