Roasted Carrot Hummus

This has got to be one of my favorite homemade hummuses. The roasted carrots make it SO special! The roasting of the carrots does make this hummus a bit longer to prep, but it is worth it! I used FRESH chickpeas with this recipe, but if you do not have time to cook the chickpeas or do not have fresh chickpeas on hand, 2 boxes will do just fine.

This recipe makes a good amount of hummus. You can eat it all, give some to a friend, or store it in the fridge for the week and eat it with pita chips, cucumbers, celery and carrots.. is that weird to eat carrot hummus with carrots?

You will need some kind of bender for this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4 large sized carrots - roughly chopped
• EVOO for roasting carrots
• 2 tbs EVOO to put in HUMMUS while mixing
• salt (you will add salt to the carrots and then more to the hummus while mixing)
• pepper
• 1 cup raw dried chick peas (you will be cooking these, I did it in a crockpot just add water and cook for a couple hours on high) OR 2 Boxes/BPA free cans of chickpeas
•  1/4 cup tahini
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon turmeric 
• 1 garlic clove chopped
• Juice of 1/2 large lemon or 1 small lemon
• 1/2 cup-2/3 cup water - depends on how thick your hummus ends up being. Add water as needed.

Directions: 

* If using fresh chickpeas cook them according to package,

• preheat oven to 400 degrees
• place roughly chopped carrots coated with EVOO, salt and pepper in the oven for about 20 minutes or until tender. 
• While carrots are cooking squeeze your lemon, measure out your 2 tbs of EVOO, 1/2 C tahini and all of your spices (cumin, paprika, turmeric and salt). 
• Dump the chickpeas, cooked carrots and all your mise en place (aka all the food you prepped) in the blender- don't forget your garlic clove.
• Blend and slowly add in water. You will need to pause and scrape down the sides and then start to blend again.
• Your hummus is done when it is smooth and all mixed. It will be a beautiful orange color and will taste AWESOME! You can serve it in a bowl and add a bit of EVOO to the top if you wish.

ENOY! XO

Zoodles & Homemade Pesto

View fullsize

I had my sister in law over this weekend visiting from NYC. She mentioned homemade pesto and how you can pretty much make it from anything green! She also said I should give a shout out to Bitter Sweet Sara. I put the untraditional pesto to the test and it was good! Above are my zoodles and homemade pesto. 

Making the zoodles are easy! The hard part for me was getting the right proportions of greens to nuts to cheese to oil. I did a little investigation and took a poll online, and the proportions below seem to work great! 

• 2 cups greens, 1/3 cups nuts, 1/2 cup grated hard cheese, and 1/2 cup oil
• this blog also talks about pesto and ratios

I used basil, arugula, baby kale, cilantro and parsley. Stems and all! I also used EVOO, walnuts and parmesan cheese. I might have gone a little green crazy....

View fullsize

View fullsize

What do you put in your pesto? What do you put your pesto on?

Black Bean Hummus, make your own at home!

photo (28)

Its easy! We know that hummus is made from ground chickpeas... so how hard can this be, right? I did not have tahini so this is a tahini free hummus. The only thing is that you need a food processor. Mine is about 40 years old, probably. It was my grandmas and she gave it to me, but it works like a charm! Cuisinart, baby!

* Tahini is roasted sesame seed paste. It is actually really good.

photo (27)

Ingredients:

1 can black beans

1 can garbanzo beans

2 garlic cloves (you can do one if you do not love garlic)

1 jalapeño pepper (mine was spicy- so do a half or none if you do not like "heat")

half  lemon

1/4 cup water

2 tablespoon EVOO

cumin, salt, pepper to taste (I didn't measure I  just kinda added it in)

Directions:

photo (26)

Add all ingredients to food processor, blend until smooth. I made sure to mince the garlic and Jalapaneo pepper before I put in blender.  If the final product looks too thick add more water and blend again. Enjoy with carrot sticks, or pita chips.

photo (25)

Let me know if you try, and how it comes out!