Monday, November 14, 2011

look! 2 posts in one day! My Hummus recipe:

I went on what seemed like a scavenger hunt looking for the main ingredient in Hummus, "Tahini".  Well, after searching every isle of every grocery store in Ponca City, I finally ended up at the only one I hadn't been to and what should have been the most obvious choice, Food Pyramid on 14th street.  I found it on the international food isle by the peanut butter.  So, today I made the hummus and it was well worth the hours of searching and the $10 jar of Tahini.  This stuff tastes way better than any hummus I've ever purchased pre-made from the store.  I found a good recipe, but it was a little too dry, so I added olive oil and more lemon juice to the mixture.  Here is my altered recipe:

Ingredients:
1 15.5 oz can Garbanzo Beans (chick peas), drained
1/3 cup tahini
the juice of 4 lemons
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
about 1 Tbsp olive oil
sprinkle of paprika and parsley flakes

Directions:
Place the garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, salt, and garlic into a blender or food processor.  Blend until smooth.  Transfer mixture to a serving bowl.  Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with paprika and parsley.


It was really hard to get smooth in my blender.  I had to keep stirring it up and still ended up with a few beans not blended, but it tastes so good.  It would probably be better in a food processor, but this is definately THE recipe to keep.

mumu to tunic in about 30 minutes

I recently went shopping in Ponca City for maternity clothes and came home very disappointed.  There is absolutely no place to buy maternity clothes except for the second hand stores and pickins are slim!  I found one actual maternity top in my size in all the stores I visited.  I did, however, find some pieces I could repurpose.  I found this great mumu for $1 at My Favorite Things.  It was a great color and the fabric had good weight for fall/winter and i loved the details on the sleeves.
I started by cutting off the gathered skirt piece at the bottom.  I also cut off the elastic hemmed into the sleeves.  I then, by luck, found some matching thread that I had already purchased for some other project, and hemmed the bottom and sleeves.


I then pinned some elastic to the inside to make the waist empire and fitted.  The easiest way to do this is to put the piece on inside out, pin the elastic to the sides and mark with a tailors chalk where you want the elastic to hit, then take it off, stretch the elastic and pin it down in even increments to make sure it gathers evenly.  I then sewed the elastic on with a straight stitch across the top and bottom edges of the elastic, stretching while I sewed.

Voila!  now I have a cute maternity top that took me $1 and about 30 minutes.