Creamy Hummus and a Kitchen Fave

We love hummus at my house and I learned a basic recipe a while back. Today I am going to show you one of my favorite hummus recipes. I start with 1 can of white kidney beans, 1 can of chick peas (reserving some of the liquid), a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, 3-4 garlic cloves, about a tablespoon each of cumin and sesame seeds.

Everything gets added to the food processor. I only add about half of the lemon juice though until after it is blended. As it is blending I will slowly add in some of the reserved liquid from the chickpeas. Continue to blend until you have a nice creamy hummus.

Using the kidney beans was a happy accident. One day I was making hummus and realized that I had accidently grabbed one can of chick peas and one of the kidney beans. I was cooking with Samantha that day and she was looking forward to making hummus. I decided to give it a go and was happy with the end product. I makes a very smooth hummus. 

Most hummus recipes use tahini and sometimes I do too. The store I shop at does not always have it and it is a little pricey so sometimes it just isn't in the budget. I will add some sesame seeds or sometimes a drizzle of toasted sesame oil. 

Hummus is very versatile and I make it pretty frequently to eat with pitas or as a dip for veggies.

My food processor is one of my favorite kitchen tools. I love it for making hummus like here, making pasta or other doughs and many many other things. There is a funny story about this though. I had never had one before, but I wanted one. I had a good blender and couldn't really justify the cost for something that I didn't know if I would use that often. The first Christmas after we were married, Kip evidently mentioned to his mom and sister that he was thinking of buying one as part of my Christmas. They let him know that most women would not appreciate a kitchen appliance for a gift. He thought different, and I am glad he did because I was very excited when I opened the box! If I had known how many different ways I could use it, I would have probably gotten once even sooner.

Have a great weekend!

Kitchen Faves / Pi Day

I am back with another favorite item in my kitchen, actually, I think this one is more of a Kip favorite! I love kitchen gadgets of all kinds and would love to own everything if I had enough room for storage. Most everything I buy now can do more than one thing, I don't buy a lot of things that only have one purpose, especially if they are kind of bulky. One of the exceptions is this mini pie maker. 

Kip really loves dessert and I really didn't make it that often unless we were having company over or if we were going somewhere and taking food. One of the reasons was because if I made it we would definitely eat it, and eat all of it. With just the two of us in the house that was a lot of extra calories that we didn't need. So I started searching for some recipes with a smaller yield. Even if I am making dessert from scratch with real food ingredients, I really don't have much need to have 36 cupcakes at a time. 

I saw this pie maker on sale one day and kind of on impulse purchased it. Kip was pretty skeptical at first, mainly because it only does one thing and it is one more piece of equipment that needed to be stored in my already overstocked kitchen. I won him over the first time that I made an apple pie for dessert. By the second time he had a pie for dessert, he was a huge fan.

This fall when apples were coming into season I canned several jars of apple pie filling to have on hand. I almost always have a pie crust in the freezer so if I need a quick dessert, all I have to do is pull out the crust, roll it out, pour in a jar of pie filling and pop it in the oven and I am good to go. I canned this pie filling in both quart jars for a full size pie and in pint jars for making mini pies or serving over ice cream.

 One thing I like about this set too is that it came with that black cutter. The larger side cuts the perfect size for the bottom crust and the other side cuts the top crust. 

Here are my finished pies. A lot of the time I only make one for each of us, but I decided to make one for lunches today too. Yesterday was Pi Day (3/14) and I knew my geeky husband would appreciate getting an apple pie for dessert!

The pie crust recipe that I use and keep in the fridge can be found here. I have used several over the years and I like this one because it isn't sweet so I can use it for savory pies too, not just dessert. I really like that it makes three crusts. They store well in the freezer and it's great to have them already made if I need them. 

Have a great weekend!

Kitchen Faves--Spices

I wanted to take some time to share some of my favorite things in my kitchen and thought I would start with my spice area. These are small, round containers with a magnet on the back and I store them on the side of my refrigerator. In addition to spices I have some cake/cookie decorations and sprinkles. I love the fact that everything is easily accessible, I can find everything and I really enjoy seeing all the different colors. There are some spice blends in there, some I have bought and some are ones that I assemble myself. Things like taco seasoning, fajita seasoning, and hamburger seasoning I use quite a bit so when I make it I make quite a bit of it. 

My spice "wall" gets a lot of comments when I have visitors. I almost always get asked these two questions: "Do you use all those spices?" and "How did you afford to buy all those spices? My grocery budget won't stretch to buy a lot of spices like that."

DO I USE ALL THOSE SPICES? Yes I do. Some more often than others, but I do use all of them. I like to experiment cooking from from different areas of the globe that sometimes call for very specific spices. I don't use a lot of salt in my cooking, I rely on spices for flavor. 

HOW DID YOU AFFORD ALL THOSE SPICES?  One or two at a time! When I first moved out into my own apartment, I wanted to make some spice cookies from a recipe that a friend had shared with me. Those cookies were so good when she made them but they have about seven different spices in them. I learned very quickly that my "just moved out on my own" budget could not buy all of these spices at once. So I bought one. Then every time I went to the grocery store and I had any extra money, I would buy one spice. It took me several months before I could make those cookies! But that is something I continued as I build my spice collection. I would find an interesting recipe and if I was missing a spice or two, I would put it aside until I could buy the spices to make it. After a while, I had quite a few and then it was just a matter of replacing the ones that I had used. Today, it is pretty rare for me to find a recipe that I am missing the spices for unless I am working on something very regional.