Spiced Up Hummus

First, if you do not have a food processor, get one, put it on your birthday wish list or next year's Christmas list if you can wait. I couldn't, I had to get one last summer when our garden was flourishing. They open up so many opportunities for cooking! And it's pretty much a must for hummus.



I've never bought hummus after I got my food processor. It's relatively expensive when you buy it pre-made at the store. It's about 58,000 times cheaper to make it yourself and literally just takes a few minutes and most of the time stuff you already have in the kitchen besides the chick peas.



First you need some chick peas or garbanzo beans. I use chick peas because they are easier for me to find. These puppies are only like .70 a can! Two cans makes a medium sized serving, but you can freeze the stuff, so make a lot if you want.





Drain the chick peas or garbanzo beans.




For this kind of hummus I used a bell pepper, jalapenos, onion and garlic. What ingredients and how much you put in your hummus is alllll up to you. You can make all different kinds of hummus. Use your imagination.

This time, rather than just chopping the veggies and putting them in the hummus, I decided to saute them a bit. Just roughly chop your veggies, let your food processor do the rest of the work. Throw some olive oil, salt and fresh cracked black pepper in a skillet on medium for about 10 minutes. Then, before you add anything else into your food processor, pulse the veggies until they are well processed, then add your chick peas or garbanzo beans. You can either pulse the hummus or put it on low, but you want to slowly drizzle olive oil into the food processor while it's running until you get the consistency of hummus. If you have never had hummus it's rather thick and pasty. It normally takes a few minutes to really grind up the chick peas or garbanzo beans. Once it's all ground up and a good consistency, throw in some salt and fresh cracked black pepper, a tablespoon or two of tahini (sesame seed paste), pulse it a few times and give her a taste. Need more flavor? Add a couple of pinches of salt.

Finished product. Enjoy this cheap, relatively healthy and delicious snack with fresh veggies, crackers, pita bread, baguette toast or whatever else you can come up with!

*A few other ideas:

Roasted red pepper hummus

Sun dried tomato hummus

Roasted garlic hummus

Ingredients:

Chick peas or garbanzo beans (amount is up to you, nothing in hummus is set in stone)

Olive oil

Salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

Vegetables, herbs and flavorings of your choice