Hummus - The Quest - Chapter One

Yesterday I fixed some hummus to take to a party, using my usual recipe. Drain a can of garbanzo beans, put in food processor with sesame tahini, olive oil, chopped garlic, lemon juice, and water.

The garlic was from Cresset Farm. The olive oil is one of my Exceptions. What about the rest of the ingredients?

Lemon juice: I used the last spoonful of lemon juice in the bottom of the bottle. It's gone.......

Sesame Tahini: On hand in the refrigerator, maybe enough for two more batches of hummus, then that's gone...... Can you grow sesame seeds here? I don't know, but I'm sure nobody is doing it now.

The canned garbanzoes: There's hope on this score. Abbondanza CSA in Boulder grows garbanzos, and with luck I can get some.

It's a simple recipe, a simple food, but creating it will pose me some problems in the immediate future.

I was inspired by the loss of hummus to think about getting a Meyer lemon tree, a successful house plant as a tree in a big pot. It should be able to winter over inside, then spend the summer on the patio. I also started thinking about.... kumquats. Not one of my most favorite foods, but the citrus tang sounds pretty good right now. They can grow in an even smaller pot, being a little two or three-foot tree. I'm thinking... I could sliver them with chicken, or in a salad....

Local eating doesn't mean going back to what was eaten here 100 years ago, or 500 years ago for that matter. Our great-grandparents wintered on sauerkraut, potatoes, bacon, coffee, and bread. But we don't need to restrict ourselves as much as that. We can choose from a world of food plants, the ones that WILL grow in our climate, or in our sunny windows, not just the ones that grew here in the distant past.

In a few months, I'll write Chapter Two of Hummus, the Quest. Or maybe I won't? I'll give it a try, anyway.