Recipe:garlic spinach hummus

Hello there all,

I have an unnatural love for hummus. Now, I'm talking: "if I sit down with a tub, there will not be any left in 20 minutes" type of problem. I especially have a soft spot for King's Harvest. It is insane how delicious it is, but what is even more ridiculous is how much we spend on hummus which is much cheaper to make. In the past, I was always reluctant because we didn't have tahini (sesame paste) on hand, and I didn't know where to get it. However, we recently went to a Pacific Islander grocery store, and they had a big tub. I was a little too overjoyed to finally be able to make my own hummus.

In this house, we have a garlic love that would make vampires cringe. We put so much garlic on things that would probably make others shutter, but we love it. So, I knew that I wanted a garlic hummus. I found this recipe from Pinterest, and I used it for my structure to start my recipe off of. The reason that I decided to add spinach to the recipe is because we had a ridiculous amount of spinach at home, and it never hurts to sneak in some veggies.

The ingredients:

• 1 can (15.5 oz) of garbanzo beans (also known as chickpeas)
• 1 large handful of spinach
• 2 TBSP of Olive Oil
• 3 TBSP of minced garlic
• 3 TBSP of Lemon juice
• 2 TBSP of tahini
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1/4 tsp of black pepper
• dash of crushed red pepper

The steps:

1.) Wash the garbanzo beans off and drain all liquid from the beans.

2.) Put all ingredients together (minus the crushed red pepper) into a blender cup or a food processor.

3.) Pulse the ingredients until desired texture/consistency.

4.) Pour into desired eating container and sprinkle some crushed red pepper on top.

5.) Eat your nommy hummus and think about how awesome you are. Pretend that you are in a middle eastern country if you prefer. Just get your eat on.

Fun Sort-of related story:

Our can opener and I fight regularly. I am not quite sure what it is, but I speculate that the can opener hates me. Whenever I try to use the dang thing, I usually end up hollering to the kid and asking for him to help. In my past, I had a different style can opener, and I cannot seem to comprehend the baffling mystique of the stupid can opener. However, tonight, I figured it out! The mystery somehow made sense, and I actually hollered "YAY!" when I got it, and yes, there was much kitchen dancing. What is a kitchen for but for dancing?

Happy can opening,

Autumn

Recipe: Spent grain banana bread

Hello there all,

I have a confession. I used to hate bananas. Yes, it is true. Even the smell of baking banana bread made me want to puke. However, in my older refined age, I have grown to love them and even yearn to smell banana bread baking.

Recently, the honey made one of his delicious batches of beer leaving us with a lot of spent grain. What is spent grain? They are the grains that are used in the beer making process. After the the home brewing adventure, you are left with gallons of grains. There are a couple of things that you can do with your leftover spent grain that we do (who wants to throw away food that you paid for?):

• Add into our compost bin
• Make spent grain flour (drying out the grains and then grinding them up, so they make a flour) to bake with
• Using the wet grains in recipes (the drawback to this method is that the grains can only stay good in the refrigerator for so long before they go bad)

With a heaping load of wet grains ticking away in our refrigerator and multiple bananas melting away, it only made sense to make up a delicious batch of banana bread.

The recipe that I concocted was influenced by the recipe here.

What you'll need:

• 1 cup of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of tightly packed brown sugar
• 2 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 4 mashed bananas
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp of molasses
• 1.5 tsp of cinnamon
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 3/4 cup of wet spent grain (you could substitute this for other things like rolled oats)
• 5 tbsp of melted butter
• chocolate chips (optional)

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together: egg, mashed bananas, vanilla, melted butter, and spent grain.
4. Gradually add the dry mixture of flour, sugar, etc. to the wet mixture of egg, bananas, etc.
5. Pour mixture into a greased bread pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips if you desire.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
7. NOM!

The wet mixture

The mixture of dry and wet ingredients in the pan. Contemplating the life long question: to add chocolate or not to add chocolate?

Of course you add chocolate!

 The delicious noms fresh from the oven. This is a fairly moist/dense recipe, but I mean that in all of the best ways. It is delicious.

-Autumn

Recipe: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello there all,

It is autumn. The most wonderful time of the year and the time of the year with some of the most delicious foods. One of my favorite things to nom during this time of the year is pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Heck it is even on my fall to do list here.

It celebrates the deliciousness of fall alongside with the sweetness that my sweet tooth constantly craves.

The ingredient list:

• 1 cup of canned pumpkin puree
• 1 cup of tightly packed light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1.5 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1 tsp of milk
• 1 TBSP of vanilla
• 1 11.5 oz bag of milk chocolate chips

 The steps:

1.) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

2.) In a bowl, mix together the pumpkin, brown sugar, egg, and olive oil until it is creamy.

3.) Mix together baking soda, vanilla, and milk until the baking soda dissolves. Add this into the pumpkin, sugar, etc. mixture.

4.) In a separate bowl, mix together pumpkin pie spice, flour, salt, and baking powder.

5.) Slowly add the dry mixture into the wet mixture until well mixed then add the bag of milk chocolate chips.

6.) Spray a pan with olive oil. Scoop the cookie dough by the spoonful onto the pan. Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for about 11 minutes. This recipe makes about 30 cookies.

 7.) Enjoy!

Even Alfredo got his hands onto a couple of cookies. He eats and he eats, but he is all bones!


Enjoy the noms and cross that off of your autumn to-do list.

-Autumn