Hummus

I am constantly reading my cookbooks, so when I found the hummus recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian I was basically ready to try it immediately. Lucky for me, it couldn't be easier. With minimal ingredients and a ton of possible variations, this is something everyone should be making at home. I have been carefully checking ingredients lists lately, and preservatives and chemicals are NOT things that I want to eat. Unfortunately, my (former) favorite hummus brand (Sabra) is not present at Whole Foods*, which is a kind of lazy trick I use to decide whether I want to eat something. The reason it is my favorite is because of the big pile of seasonings and whole chickpeas and other random good tasting stuff in the middle. But if I make my own... I can just add that in myself.

For this particular batch of hummus I used organic canned chickpeas, and chose paprika as my spice (Mark Bittman offers cumin as the other option in the basic recipe). I also used extra garlic and extra lemon. One caution is that it comes out very very thick - that is why he has you add water, to thin it out. However, keep in mind that it will thicken up in the fridge, so you should make it thinner than you want to initially.

This hummus is something that I will definitely be making again and would be a great option to bring to a party or picnic. The picture may not be that easy to identify, but it is me holding a pita chip with some hummus on it.

*I don't buy everything at Whole Foods... I don't even make it there very often. But when I do go, I spend a LOT of time there and I really pay attention to what is around me. I can trust them to have "foods that are free of artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats"(according to their website). So I pay attention to things I see there and if I see them at a conventional grocery store, I feel much better about picking them up without thoroughly examining the ingredient list.

Pret "Salad" Sandwich

This sandwich was inspired by one of my very favorite sandwiches at one of my very favorite places to have lunch in NYC. I like to bring my lunch because of all the calories, sodium, and who knows what else in takeout food around the city. But I (re)discovered Pret A Manger, which I had been to several times for lunch in London. They use only natural ingredients, no preservatives, and they donate their leftover sandwiches and stuff at the end of the day. This is a nice healthy alternative to the takeout options that my coworkers usually eat (although some of them go to Pret sometimes, too).

If you visit Pret's website you can find some "DIY Recipes." Some of them are totally impossible for me to make, if not for the lack of availability of ingredients, then for the metric measurements. But I had seen the Pret Salad Sandwich recipe on the site, and was so excited when they featured it as a weekly special in the store I go to in NYC. It consists of hummus and some veggies on whole wheat bread - delicious! I thought this would be a quick and easy thing to make for our light lunch. I was already chopping up cucumbers for my go-to salad, the Cucumber Feta Salad, so I set some aside for the sandwich. The cucumbers were from my Nonna's backyard, so yum - local food! I also chopped up some red pepper, and I used a few leaves of the spinach I had picked up for the pasta dish. I spread the hummus on the bread, sprinkled on some pine nuts, layered the veggies, and voila! Pret Salad Sandwich DIY in my own home. Easy peasy. I used Sabra hummus (the one with the pine nuts, for consistency) but sometime I would like to try making my own lemony hummus concoction. I meant to add some thin slivers of red onion to the sandwich, but I forgot. Oops!

I served the sandwich with a little of the salad, and since we were going for a light lunch I just made one sandwich for us to split. It was the perfect tiny portion to hold us over before we went on our very fruitful adventure to Whole Foods.