My Hummus recipe

I have enough people that ask me for this on a regular basis that I figured it was worth posting here in order to save myself some time.

I admit that I pride myself a little bit on this recipe, only because I've perfected it, however 1 aspect of it I have not and I was told recently by a very close chef friend that its because I don't have a super highpowered food processor. I have a decent one that I paid about $60 for at a kitchen supply place a few years ago, and it does an ok job, but really to get the super creamy texture you find in restaurants and in prepacking in stores you need one of those better restaurant grade ones. Never the less you can still get a decent texture with this recipe, its just going to take a little longer.

With that said enjoy my 4 step process Hummus recipe below. I make it at least once a week (more if time allows, my hubby is addicted to it).



Hummus
_________
(this recipe uses 3 cans of chick peas so it is a larger batch, see storage/refridgeration info below)



This is a 4 step process. You must follow this process to get the desired outcome, otherwise your hummus will be chunky thick and hard to swallow.



step 1. THE STARTER

in a decent food processor cream together 1/2 C of Tahini and 3/4 C of lemon juice (you can use bottled or fresh, I prefer bottled for taste and simplicity)

whip until frothy (at least 1 minute, will become a liquidy substance and will lighten in color)

Step 2. THE TASTE

add in fresh garlic cloves. If you want a mild garlic flavor add in 2 large cloves. If you want a decent but not overpowering garlic flavor add in 3-4 large cloves. If you really like garlic, add in 5 large cloves. (you can chop a little first to help the processor out)

mix in processor well (30-60 seconds)


Add in 3 cans of drained chickpeas (garbanzo). I prefer the organic canned but even the cheapie off brands work just fine.

blend for 3 seconds. At this point it will be very chunky still but taste it anyway, ignore the texture, what you want is taste...is there enough garlic and lemon for your taste? For me I usually add in about another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of lemon juice because I prefer mine tangy, ...its all a matter of preference. If you decide you want more add in a little bit, process, TASTE. If it needs more, REPEAT, if your flavor is exactly what you want go onto next step.

Step 3. TEXTURE

once you have your flavors the way you want, its time to process the heck out of your mixture. Get the food processor started on low/medium...add in a few tablespoons of water at a time until it starts to break up and thin out some (don't add too much as you will be adding in olive oil at the end and you don't want it runny...) BEAT THE HECK OUT OF IT LOL! I usually stand there for a good 5-7 minutes and once I get it think out almost enough (remember not all the way) I turn it up as high as my processor will go and let it whip, and whip and whip. You can stop it, stir/scrap sides and continue too to make sure its all incorperated, but you get the idea.

Once you've reached the texture you want (remember that it will still be a bit chunky unless you have a rockstar high end processor)...move onto step 4.


Step 4 THE FINISH

at the end for about 20-30 seconds tops you can stream in olive oil on low. I do about 1/4 Cup or a little more for a recipe of this size. You don't want to whip the olive oil as it can turn bitter tasting if you do. This will also thin the mixture out a little bit more and it will make it slightly creamier as well.

Thats it...ALL DONE!! :)


Storage: eat within 3-5 days in refridgerator or i've been told you can freeze this up to a month, however I've never tried it only because I have 10 people I feed and they eat this up in about 2 days max (or less).


I serve with Lemon pepper pan chicken and sauteed pine nuts...YUM!

gluten free, low fat, HEALTHY and delicious, my kids LOVE it and my husband horrdes it :)

Good luck and if you have any questions or run into problems with anything above feel free to send me a message ;)

.*~ ENJOY ~*.

School in my future?

Someone informed me this weekend that I actually CAN get my $ from the Army for college. I've been told this before, so I'm a bit leary, but this person had a few places for me to try that I've never tried before.

Technically I have over $30K coming to me,...I cannot tell you how many times over the years I've kicked myself for not staying in another 6 months to get that money (I wanted to be at home with my daughter, we were in Germany, childcare was scare and not reliable). I don't totally regret the decision I made to come home when I did, but I do wish I had thought it through a little more and maybe postponed it those extra few months. $1200.00 of that money was money *I* put into my college fund and was told I can never get that back.

Anyway, IF the above is true, I am really leaning towards becoming a nutritionist. I thought about personal training, but (no offense lol) i'm not sure I like the person idea of that. I know one PT who is female and she is awesome, but the few guys I know that are are not the kind of person I want to be thought of as. I don't know a lot of them,...I don't know, maybe my perception is off?? Either way I'd like to be able to have a part time position somewhere once the kids are all in school in another year and a half (WOW thats close!!).

The final count down.

Its been a long time since I posted, and it looks like the last few things I did post ab out were either fluff (songs) or a bit of whining about my housing sitch lol.

Never the less here I am, i figured this was easier than some stupid snippet I might put on facebook, and honestly I have a few minutes while kids are having snacks and babies are still napping.

In order to get this out of the way, the update on the housing situation is this, and purely this...unless one of the following happens: economy rebounds, we win the lottery, we get some huge unexpected windfall, it looks as though we are being forced to take drastic measures with our housing situation. I'm not exactly going to spell out on here what that means, but if you can't figure it out think worst case scenario. What it has boiled down too is...we need a bigger house, more importantly we need 5 BR's and a minimum of 2 bathrooms (2.5 plus being ideal). No matter what we do we can't have that in this house. We have tried everything outside of 2 options that are left, one of them is rent out this house while we rent another house, yeah...no thanks. While I'd love to live in a dream world where that might actually work time wise (which is the case, i'd never have time to maintain a rental, i barely have time to maintain the current house i own), I don't know how smart it is to risk renting out an already insideout investment. The long story short is, we stay here and live with it for 2 years then move on, or, we do it sooner than that. The long story short, it SUCKS. I am praying for a smooth transition, as it won't be easy to find a place to fit a family this size but I'm hopeful, more hopeful than the prospect of staying here.

In other news (now that that is out of the way lol), we have 10 days left until the shut down is over. I cannot tell you how happy i am that we have TEN DAYS left lol (projected end anyways lol). It has been a very long month living without Dean but we are looking forward to it being over.

We have lots to look forward too in the next few months. For starters things are really taking off for our Advocare business. Have I mentioned this yet? A few months back Dean came to me with this company he thought sounded cool, and I pretty much chalked it up to hype and something i would never pursue because direct sales isn't really all that much fun (and I know because i've BTDT a lot, too many times to count.) Well, one energy drink later, I was hooked!!

Advocare is a nutritional company that has been around for over 17 yrs now, based out of Dallas TX. Their line of energy drinks is only the tip of the ice berg in terms of product. Their focus is weightloss, muscle building, sports nutrition and overall being healthy. They operate under a panel of 8 doctors and have a reputation as a winning company. They teach a debt buster system, give incentives and more. Anyways...our journey began back in August and in that short amount of time we have not only lost inches off our bodies, but we are also bringing in income to boot. The crazy part is, I hardly feel like I've done anything other than share how this stuff has (is!) changing our life.

We started with the 24 day challenge,...I lost over 7 inches during that time, and since then have lost approx. another 6 for a grand total of 13 inches. This equates to 2.5 pants sizes. When we started I was a size 12/14 depending on the brand, and as of today I am currently a size 8/10 and well on my way to being a full blown size 8. My friends call me the incredible shrinking woman lol, its that dramatic. It does require that you eat a good diet, however you get to EAT versus dieting where you starve yourself into failure. It's amazing stuff!! So if you hear me talking about it, thats why. I never thought I'd be this small, ever...and I'm not quite to my goal yet (size 6!). I'll be there hopefully by Feb when we go to Success school in TX. It's CRAZY ...I can't believe my job is to lose body fat and get paid for it?!!! I'm in heaven <3

This of course has changed a lot in terms of life in our home as well, it is an addition of something else on our plate, but its an investment in time that will pay for itself. I'll try and post some pics soon of the changes we have both been through, Dean has lost tons of body fat as well (and we never really thought he had a whole lot, well I can tell you he did have some as its now GONE lol and the muscles are getting bigger :) )



The kids are doing good, looking forward to fall/winter activities. We are headed back to Hocking Hills for Christmas. We decided since there is no room in this house to put anything new, we might as well go make a memory for Christmas versus buy more *stuff*. We have a cabin rented for 2 whole days on xmas eve and day, can't wait...hope it SNOWS!! :D

I'm going to try and post more often, life has been far too hectic lately between Dean being gone, the renovations that we were doing, plus trying to live normal life. I really want to start beinbg able to post pictures on a regular basis,...I'd love to be able too my time schedule is just ridiculous. I'm lucky to get 10 minutes a day to myself and thats not a joke. my workouts/runs are usually done at 5am or 9pm, not exactly good times to have energy for me. It's been a very rough last 6-8 weeks but I'm thankful we are on the brink of being finished, as I know Dino is. All this and we have the 2012 to still look forward too LOL.