Hummus - Basic recipe

I haven't made hummus for a while. I like to have some sort of beans soaking and noticed the bag of garbanzos someone gave me. So I put them in water a couple of days ago, and by yesterday they needed rinsing and cooking. I turned off the heat last night when I went to bed and just hoped they were done.

This morning I tested them and they were cooked enough, maybe not quite all the way to very soft but good enough for hummus.

I have a new food processor that would surely smooth them into a pleasant paste.

The food processor had a residue of green powder in it. This was left over from drying greens from the garden and pulverizing them for use in the winter. One pound of greens - enough to fill my picking basket - dried down enough to make less than a half-cup of powder. So what was sticking to the food-processor bowl was a significant amount, something I didn't want to waste. Green powder would make a perfect amendment to hummus, so after I got out all I could, I just whirred the cooked beans in the same bowl. (My food processor has 3 nesting bowls.)

Here's the recipe I use. If you like to measure precisely, this is probably not the recipe for you!

Basic Hummus

1. Soak a 1 pound bag of garbanzos for a day or 2, rinse thoroughly.
2. Put in a pot with a lid, cover with an inch or more of water, and cook until tender.
3. Scoop half the beans into a food processor (or less if yours handles only small batches), using a slotted spoon.
4. Let the processor work until the beans are mostly smooth, adding cooking liquid to get to the consistency you like.
5. While the processor is working, add several tablespoons of sesame tahini (made from raw sesame seeds). I prefer a hummus that tastes strongly of sesame. You may want to use less.
6. Toss several garlic cloves into the processor chute while the processor continues to work.
7. Add salt to taste, 1 tsp or more.
8. While the processor is still working, squeeze a lemon over a strainer and into the processor chute.
9. When everything looks homogeneous, stop the processor and taste. Adjust as needed.
10. When you are satisfied, scoop the contents out into a container with a lid, pour several tablespoons of tasty olive oil over the top, and refrigerate. Serve on salad or with raw or cooked veggies.
11. Refrigerate the cooked garbanzos and their liquid for another batch of hummus or to make another garbanzo-bean recipe.

This is a gluten-free recipe made only with real foods.

First potatoes of the season!

Today John harvested the first 3 potatoes of the season, reds from last year.

We must have missed harvesting one. And from that one we have these three and lots more: The plant is in bloom, so it's still producing, growing the baby spuds still. 

I love gardens! Magical things happen there. You put this bit of DNA in the ground in the form of a seed or a piece of potato, and you end up with something that knows how to organize sunlight, water, stuff from the soil, and maybe things we can't see, into food we can eat. Tiny seed, lots of food. 

I never get tired of marveling over it. 

Anyway, we'll have perfect fresh potatoes as part of our supper for the first time tonight.

We were behind putting things in because we were away. This potato overwintered so it had a head-start on the others. Maybe next year we'll just leave a few dozen in the ground on purpose and save a lot of work!

Spring treat - frizzled garden greens

We planted a fair number of quick-growing greens when we got back from New Zealand in April. We were eager to get something out of the garden, and some greens take only 30 or so days.

And then the 30 days went by (rather quickly) and now we have lots of greens, some of them bolting already despite our very cool June. They include several kinds of mustard, turnip greens, radish greens, kale (old and new), chard (old, just starting to go into its second-year biennial seed-producing phase) - a total of 8 kinds.

If I'd left them in the garden, they would have become tough and bitter. I have other options: leave them in the fridge till I need them (but there are more every day); sauté them and pack for the freezer against a day next winter when they'll be great in a soup; or….

Frizzle them!

I have done this before with kale but not as a regular habit and not with other varieties of greens. Here's what I'm doing now:

I'm looking over the greens when I first gather them from the garden. I don't want to wash them if I don't have to. Mostly they are fine, since I have harvested them by cutting them off several inches above ground level with scissors.

Then I'm laying them out on foil on a cookie sheet. The foil has been used several times, and already has a thin coating of olive oil, which adds a perfect flavor for greens. Once there, I wipe them around a pit in the oil, and if they seem dry, I'm adding a few more sprinkles of olive oil.

Then into the oven they go. The oven has been preheated to 400 degrees. Or else it is hot from baking something else, and that's the temperature I use. They go on the bottom rack.

Then I do my best to keep an eye on them. I don't want them getting black. They could use moving around at about the 3 minute mark. In 5 minutes, they are ready to take out, usually.

Once they're out, I let them cool off. Or I sprinkle them with parmesan. Or I sprinkle them with salt.

I serve them with supper. They're great on soup, or just to eat by hand with almost anything. (So far, with everything.) They're reminiscent of nori.

I'm thinking of crumbling them into leftover rice tonight, after it's reheated. Though they really are best when they are crisp, and it takes almost no moisture to soften them up and the rice may wreck them.

Last night supper got delayed by Father's Day calls from the kids, so I didn't go out harvesting. Instead I just grabbed a handful of mixed greens from the produce-keeper bag in the fridge to frizzle. So if you don't have a garden but want to have these very tasty (irresistible) healthy crisps around, you can certainly use greens from the farmers' market or store.

Let me know how you're using them.

Whole-chicken and garden soup

We've eaten this soup all winter. This is a small variation on Creamy Chicken Soup because when I got home with the cream I found it spoiled. Improvise! (I am not going to make an 8-mile 40-minute round trip for cream.) This soup takes days but very little labor.

Put the whole chicken into the crockpot, cover (or almost cover) with water, set the pot on low, cover with the lid, and plan something else for dinner for the next few days.

When the chicken is thoroughly cooked, after 24-30 hours more or less, lift out pieces of meat for immediate use or freeze them. Discard the skin. Leave the bones and more of the meat in the pot for this recipe. Cook them for one more day.

On the third day, discard the bones and skin. Return any meat to the pot. Add veggies, such as:

• leftover baked squash
• dried summer squash pieces
• dried mushrooms, or fresh
• leftover mashed potatoes
• roasted veggies (potatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, etc) - or they can be raw
• chopped celery, or freeze-dried celery
• fresh chopped onion
• good salt to taste

Add water to the rim and return the lid to the crockpot. Let everything cook on high until heated, or on low overnight if the veggies are fresh and need more cooking. 

Using a Vita-Mix, food processor, or wand, homogenize everything that's in the pot.

Serve steaming hot. Add cream (half cup?) just before serving, or at the table.

Serving idea: Heat up some red pepper flakes in a little dish of olive oil in the microwave for 2-3 minutes. Using a teaspoon, drizzle this mixture over the soup in pleasing patterns. Don't mix it in - the variations in taste of hot soup, cold cream, and spicy oil make a nice little culinary adventure.  Serves about 8.

This soup can be the basis of many meals in the days to come, or can be frozen for eating at home or on the road.

The end of March...

Yesterday John planted asparagus and artichokes in the beds he'd prepared. We haven't done artichokes before, but are hopeful. We don't know if we can get them to winter over, but at least their roots will be bigger each year if they do. According to this article we should be sharing one big choke by August!

Then little ones will grow and we'll have a few more to enjoy.

We planted 3 plants. It may not be enough! We've got to wait a good 4 months or more to find out.

The asparagus won't be ready for a couple of years. We have a few plants that are ready to harvest this year, planted in 2007.

Otherwise, it's all preparation for a delicious future.

Dirt!

We just received our dirt. We've been getting ready, as much as possible, for it to come. First we made garden boxes for it to go into. And then we had to remove the junipers so the truck could get into the yard. (We wanted to get rid of those junipers - more about that in another post.) And we had to take down a part of the fence to give the truck access to the backyard.

That was a lot to do just to get a load of dirt dropped off! But now it's here, all 13 yards of it. It's part-way into the yard, but some of it overlaps the fence line.

Immediately we started shoveling. We started by filling up the garden box that has been waiting for it. Ten wheelbarrow loads later, it was part-full, maybe a third full. This box is 16x4x1 in dimension, or 64 cu ft. That is about 2.3 yards of the 13.

John likes to move it by the wheelbarrow, but I prefer carrying one shovelful at a time the 20 feet uphill from the pile to the box. We tend to count things around here, and I can tell you I did 80 shovelfuls. At first I did 20 and took a break. The third time I did 40 shovelfuls. The wheelbarrow holds 10 shovelfuls.

See, I'm getting more fit already! I like it ever so much better to get my exercise from real work than from a dedicated exercise session: it seems so much more meaningful!

I'd say the box is now 2/3 to 3/4 full. Big improvement from those shovelfuls! I should be able to plant tomorrow!

YAY!

By the way, this soil is a mixture of composted local heavy-metal-free sludge from a small town nearby, sand, composted chicken manure, and ...  I don't remember the rest. It seems very sandy to me, certainly more than we're used to. We'll see how that is. Even though it has the manure, we may need to add more compost just to boost the organic and water-holding content.

Garden update - July 25, 2010

Today we ate something from our garden. I reached deep into the beans, where I thought some greens would like the shade and the extra nitrogen, and broke of two 4" leaves of lettuce. They were tasty and too soon gone.

But they are a start. This was literally the first of the harvest, though there are signs of more to come. How soon?

The squash are in bud, with some female flowers emerging. The plants look awfully small to me. How can they have enough leaf area to grow a squash fruit of any size? We'll see.

Both tomato plants have blossoms, but I haven't seen any newly set fruits for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the three tomatoes that have appeared are still hard and green and in the case of the Early Girl, rather small.

The eggplant has no blooms, but it is growing leaves abundantly. I decided to move it to a section of the trellised area that is close to the house, so it gets reflected as well as direct sunlight now. That seems to have made all the difference.

Beets are making leaves, as are carrots and turnips. They are still tiny. Spinaches are growing but surely it will be a month before they will be eating size. Chard is finally emerging, and parsley is still not visible. I tucked in a few extra squash seeds of various types, and they are all growing smartly. It is impossible to believe they will have time to mature and grow fruit, though, unless we have many hot days.

Down in the yard, the baby jerusalem artichoke is growing taller each day. It is beginning to send forth its fourth set of leaves, as of this morning. I figure every leaf means more energy for the plant and yet faster growth. We figure the tubers will be ready in the winter, and will stay happily in the ground even after frost, so  right now the big deal is to get them to survive snails and deer. If they do, we'll have yummy tubers for months this winter.

Today the porch is registering over 80, so we'll get some good growth. I would feel better if the tomatoes were setting fruit - I would know I'm doing it right.

Our foggy-island garden

Our self-watering garden, on the porch to keep warm

Tomatoes (2), beans (25 or so of 3 kinds), a pepper, and our gravity-defying trellis system

8:30pm, the whole garden (contains 20+ varieties of veggies) watering itself 

A foggy morning - looking southeast through the tomatoes

Growing your own in no space at all

I just stumbled on this. It's fascinating. It's for people who live in apartments or otherwise want to grow their own food but have to garden inside.

Grow Your Own