Zucchini Lasagna that's not lasagna at all how dare it call itself that

Anyway, I was browsing the internet when I came across a forum post for what was called "Zucchini Lasagna". It's supposed to be one of the carb-reduced recipes or whatever. I don't particularly buy into that nonsense because any diet that supports you eating a pound of bacon for breakfast doesn't sound like a diet to me. (In fact, the only diet I support is a healthy one combined with exercise.)

The twist in this recipe is that instead of pasta, you use strips of zucchini. According to the poster, if you peel the zucchini first, nobody can tell it's not pasta, which is totally a lie probably created on pinterest. I made the lasagna regardless because I like veggies, and I like cheese. I like them separate, and I like them together. So, even though this is some faux lasagna, I'm down to make it.

Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3/4 cups ricotta
3/4 cups cottage cheese
1 egg
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp fresh grated Parmesan
2 cups shredded Italian cheese blend
1 large bunch of fresh baby spinach
3 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups tomato sauce

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

I sliced my zucchini pretty thin with a knife. I could have used a vegetable peeler, but I felt that might make it too thin. (You want them about 1/8-1/4 of an inch thick.)

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Blanch your zucchini in it for 1-2 minutes. In a skillet, heat the oil. Add two of the garlic cloves (chopped up), and the onion. Saute for 8-10 minutes, or until the onion is soft. 

In a bowl, mix the ricotta, cottage cheese and the egg. (You know what, you don't even really need that egg. I totally forgot about it until after I'd mixed everything, and I just got on with the rest of my life. It all tasted good in the end.) Add the remaining garlic cloves (chopped up), oregano, parsley, basil, and parmesan and mix.

Now, get all of your ingredients together. You might want to lightly grease the pan you're going to cook in, but that's up to you. Then you begin to layer your ingredients.  

Zucchini.

Baby spinach.

Tomatoes.

Cheese goo.

Onions and garlic bits.

Sauce.

Then repeat it until you hit the top of your container. 

When you're done, put some more parmesan cheese on the top because it's delicious and you love it. 

Cover it in aluminum foil and bake for 30-35 minutes. Then take the foil off and keep baking for another 10-15 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown.

Let it cool for about ten minutes before you eat it unless you want to burn your face. I know with Halloween coming up, some of you want to look authentic, so here's your opportunity. Who needs make-up when you can just do it with zucchini lasagna not lasagna?

A Note on the Weather

In the next few days there's supposed to be some storm coming through that my mother is losing her business over because she likes to be prepared.

Back around the whole Y2K panic, my mother had a well stocked supply of food in the cellar because the computers were all going to go haywire, and we wouldn't be able to buy food for a while. When Y2K didn't happen and everyone got on with the rest of their lives, we seemed to have a never-ending supply of EVERYTHING NON-PERISHABLE.

But, it will be really rainy here with some wind, and trees are big on collapsing and knocking out powerlines around here. (Don't they realize how inconvenient that is?) If I don't post early next week, it's probably because I don't have power. Have no fear though, I'll be back to posting at the end of the week when the power has returned. (Fingers crossed.)

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

This isn't a recipe from the Beekman Blog, but something a friend of mine suggested I try because it's quick and healthy. Obviously it tastes good, otherwise I wouldn't be putting it on the blog.

Quinoa is easy to find, and it's full of protein and fiber, which are both important.

I think my favorite thing about it is that when it fully cooks, it kind of looks like a little UFO or Saturn because there's a thin band that puffs out around the middle.

You boil your quinoa first to cook it, and while it's boiling you hollow out your bell peppers.

Sorry about the weird shadows. They're me and the peppers.

Then, you add whatever you like to your quinoa. I like to use lemon juice, capers, scallions, garlic, shallots, and sometimes other pieces of the pepper, but really it's up to you. There's plenty of herbs and vegetables you can use. I bet asparagus would be great now that I think about it. Some spinach. But keep in mind you'd have to cook the asparagus and spinach before you use it.

There I go, adding in capers.

I'm pretty sure I'm adding red pepper here.

Once you have it all mixed in well, you stuff your red pepper with it. 

If you cut it right, you can use your top as a little lid. Then you pop it in the oven at 350 degrees until the pepper starts to look soft and a little wrinkly (about 15 minutes).

As you can see, I didn't cut the one on the left properly, so I had more of a ring to put on it. (I guess I liked it.)

Quick, simple, and filling.

Quinoa can be used for a lot of things. Cooking it with orange juice and cranberries would make an excellent breakfast idea with more health value oatmeal. 

So give it a shot if you haven't already. It's good for you, and it's not like it's brussel sprouts.

Carmelized Pear Bread Pudding

Bread pudding would have to be one of my favorite deserts. It's a comfort food for me. It's best served warm, with pockets of sweetness hidden in all of those nooks and crannies. My friend made a version of it for the 4th of July this year. It was humid and disgusting out, and we were inside without air conditioning with the oven heating up the bread pudding. I ate it, even though it was really hot because it was bread pudding. It was delicious, and I have no regrets.

Plus, I like bread pudding because it's a recipe that you can let sit around while you go and get on with the rest of your life.

I can't find the exact recipe online, but this one is close.


CUSTARD

10 cups stale bread, cut into 1”-1 ½” cubes
5 eggs
1
⁄₃ cup granulated sugar (increase to ½ cup if using unsweetened bread)
¼ cup (yes, ¼ cup!) pure vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt
2 cups whole milk
1cup heavy cream

PEAR TOPPING

2 pounds pears (about 6-8 medium), peeled, quartered, and cored
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter  
¾ cup granulated sugar
Additional 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened, to grease pan
Preheat oven to 350°.

To make the custard:

Whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a large enough bowl to hold your bread cubes.  Whisk in the
milk and cream.  Toss in bread and with your hands push down on the bread to submerge it into your
custard.  At this point you could cover the bowl and refrigerate the pudding overnight or you could
continue with the recipe while occasionally stirring or pushing down on the bread to keep it covered with
the custard.

Caramelizing pears:

Melt butter in a large skillet (big enough to hold all your pears in a single layer) on low heat.  Sprinkle the
sugar evenly over the melted butter and lay your pears over the sugar.  Turn the heat to high and allow the
pears to cook undisturbed for 8-10 minutes.  Once the juices and pears begin to caramelize, carefully shake
the pan to distribute the heat and turn the pears over onto their other sides.  Once the pears and juices are a
medium amber caramel, remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
Pour the bread and custard into a greased 9” x 13” pan.  Distribute the pears and their juice evenly over the
pudding.  Bake in the middle of the oven for 40-45 minutes or until the custard is set and the bread that is
popping up between the pears is crispy.  Allow to cool 10 minutes before serving.  This pudding is great on
its own or with a pear-brandy-spiked vanilla sauce.
Storage:  This bread pudding is best served the day it is made but any leftovers can be wrapped in plastic
and refrigerated for 2-3 days.  Re-warm in a 300° oven for 10-15 minutes



When we made it, we used whole milk instead of heavy cream to try to reduce some of the fat content.

Here is ours soaking. We kept pressing it down with a potato masher to make sure it stayed down.

After we baked it, we tore into it before I realized I hadn't taken a picture of it. So, here's a picture of the part we didn't eat right away.

Whoops. My bad.

 I had so much left over that I wound up eating it for breakfast the next couple days. I figure it's better than eating ice cream for breakfast. Or candy bars. Not that I regularly eat either of them for breakfast, but the logic works well enough for me.

Beer Braised Beef with Onion Dumplings

This is the first recipe from the Beekman cookbook that we had to add to because the flavor garnered by the recipe wasn't enough.

There's two parts to this recipe: the beef stew and the onion dumplings.

I'm not a red meat eater myself, but fortunately the rest of my friends who were there are. I did eat some of the dumplings though, and they're awesome.

How the beef is cooked in this recipe here is closer to what we actually did to spice up our beef. (Not the colcannon part.)

Here's the beef after we browned it.

There it is in the pot. I'm not sure why it looks so orange. It's not that orange when you actually make it. It's more brown.

We had to add many spices to the stew. I tried some of the broth before we added things, and you could barely taste anything. I was surprised since any of the other recipes we've made were really flavorful.

The onion dumplings however, were absolutely wonderful in every way. 

Dumpling Ingredients:

6 tbsps unsalted butter, melted

1/3c finely chopped onion

1/4c buttermilk*

2 tbsps chopped fresh dill

1c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2c bread crumbs

*For buttermilk, I just take one cup of milk, add one tablespoon of vinegar to it, and mix it together. It works as a simple substitute.

Saute the onions in one tablespoon of the melted butter until they're tender, which should take about five minutes. Transfer this to a small bowl and stir in the buttermilk, dill, and two more tablespoons of the melted butter. 

In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients except the bread crumbs. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Then mix until everything is moist. 

In a separate bowl, mix the remaining melted butter with the bread crumbs. Take the dumpling mixture and, using a tablespoon, create a rounded ball of the batter. Drop this is in the crumbs and roll until coated. You should make about twelve dumplings with this. 

These dumplings will be dropped in the stew while it is cooking, and they should be in there twenty minutes before you're ready to serve the stew.

Here are our dumplings in the stew.

And here everything is, all cooked and plated to be served.

So, as I said before, the beef stew needed a lot of spices to give it more flavor, but once we did, my friends seemed to really like it. 

My mom made a similar stew when I was younger, except without dumplings. Those are the best part mom, so what's up with that? Hmmm?

Not that my mom will read this. She's not exactly skilled with the internet.

Braised Fennel

I've been using a lot more fennel than I have in a long while, but I really like the flavor of it. I can't believe all of the different ways it can be used, especially since I'd never even realized it existed beyond a seed this year. (I mean, I knew the seed came from somewhere, but it never occurred to me to find out where and to see if it was edible.)

This recipe calls for us to use Pernod, but Pernod is quite expensive. It's also only sold in large bottles (at least from what I've seen), and I don't think I'm going to be using Pernod to cook all the time either. So, we substituted with Sambuca, which is fairly similar and sold in smaller bottles.

It's incredible easy to make, but if you don't like licorice, it might not be the recipe for you. Fennel has a licorice flavor, and it's only enhanced even more with the Sambuca in there.

I couldn't find the recipe online, but a similar one can be found here at The Kitchn.

Roasted Cauliflower and Apple Soup

I feel like I've become some crazy soup lady lately since I've been making soups all the time. But can you blame me? They're flavorful, perfect for chilly weather, and they're easy to make. Even this recipe, which requires the extra step of roasting was easy. 

I found the recipe online here.

Roasted Cauliflower and Apple Soup

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower (about 2 pounds)

2 sweet apples, such as Crispins or Northern Spy (3/4 pounds total), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 onion, cut into 8 chunks

1/4 cup fresh ginger, sliced

3 garlic cloves, peeled

Salt

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

5 cups chicken stock or vegetable broth

Grated nutmeg, for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
2. Cut off and discard the very tough bottom of the cauliflower. Halve the cauliflower lengthwise; then cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices, including the central stalk. Transfer to a roasting pan along with the apples, onion, ginger, garlic and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Add the oil and toss to coat.
3. Roast for 40 minutes, tossing the vegetables occasionally, until the cauliflower is lightly browned and the onion is tender.
4. Working in batches, transfer some of the vegetable mixture and some of the broth to a blender (don’t fill more than half full for each batch). Puree until very smooth, about 3-4 minutes. As you work, transfer the puree to a saucepan.
5. Place the saucepan over low heat to reheat the puree. Add salt to taste. Serve garnished with a grating of nutmeg.

Here they are, just freshly laid out in the oven to roast. We did do a double batch for this recipe because we wanted some left over. (We love soup, ok?) That's why it's overflowing with vegetables.

Here they are, all cooked and waited to be BLENDED INTO OBLIVION.

And there's the finished product. It's an incredibly filling soup. It's creamy and satisfying. In this recipe, we used Jonagold apples because they're downright fantastic. I'd suggest maybe adding one or two more if you want a stronger apple taste. 

I think this is another recipe to add to the collection of things I would never have imagined my adult-self liking when I was a kid. 

Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

It's a good thing that I discovered I liked beets, otherwise this salad and I would have to make like a Journey song and go our separate ways.

But I like beets, so it's all good.

This recipe is featured online here on Epicurean, so I feel it's all right for me to post it here.

The recipe says it feeds four, but it fed six of us with leftovers.

Ingredients:

6 beets (3 red, 3 golden), tops removed

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon ground coriander

Salt

l/3 cup pecans

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

3 Kirby cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced

1 fennel bulb, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise

1 bunch arugula

4 to 6 ounces soft goat cheese, crumbled

Roasting the beets intensifies their sweet flavor, and though the cooking may take a long time, it's definitely worth the wait. Caramelizing the pecans is really quite easy, so while you're at it, make a big batch of these nuts and keep them on hand for adding to other dishes - they'll keep about a week at room temperature, packed in an airtight container.

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Rinse the beets and wrap in foil (if they are of a similar size, you can wrap several together). Place on a baking sheet and bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, or until the beets yield to gentle pressure. When cool enough to handle, unwrap and slip the skins off (use a paper towel or kitchen gloves so you don't stain your hands). Cut the beets in half and thinly slice.

Meanwhile, in a small skillet, combine the sugar, coriander, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Add the pecans and cook over low heat, tossing occasionally, until the sugar has melted and is lightly caramelized (the color of a brown paper bag), about 5 minutes. Immediately transfer the nuts to a plate to stop further cooking and darkening of the sugar.

In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, oil, and mustard. Season with salt to taste. Add the beets, cucumbers, fennel, arugula, and pecans and toss to combine. Serve with the goat cheese scattered over the top.

The only tricky part with this recipe would be the nuts. You have to move them around constantly so that they don't burn, and once the sugar melts on them just right you have to remove them from the heat. Fortunately, I go to the gym just for this reason. I do push-ups so that I am the fastest stirrer in my home. 

Rachel made sure she made this look perfect for the photo. I think she might have a future career at Panera, making the perfect salad for the picture. Or she can stick with her current job. Whatever. The economy is rough. We can't all fulfill our true calling.

The salad itself has a really good flavor. My favorite part was the goat cheese and nut combination, and the fennel was a nice touch too. All of the flavors worked together well, since some are really strong, and some are more mild. The nuts balanced out the bitter-edge of the arugula. I'd eat it again. Which is good, since I have plenty of leftovers.

Mulled Cider

Years ago, my sister made this magical Mulled Cider for some sort of family get together. I remember that she made it in a crock pot, and it had this weird little bag floating around in it. I was pretty sure she was brilliant.

Really, I was just oblivious to how Mulled Cider worked, and when I made it from the recipe in the Beekman Cookbook, I was a little less impressed by my sister's cider.

We did do a couple of things differently.

The Beekman Boys suggested you use whole cloves and allspice berries and just let them bob about in the cider. Then later you have to chase them out, which sounds like a lot of work to me. Plus, whole cloves and allspice berries are expensive.

So, I used:

That's orange zest on the wee plate.

And I put them into tea bags that you'd use for loose teas:

The one on the right is soaked with juice from the zest.

So, that's why it looks a little weird.

And then, they hung out in a crock pot and mulled.

In the recipe, they suggested boiling it on a stove, but using a crock pot is far simpler. You can just let it hang out over on the side while you do other things, and it leaves a spot open on your stove. 

I set it to high and let it boil for a bit, and then I set it on low and it hung out for a few hours until we were ready to drink it. 

In the end, it was just as good as the kind my sister made. But it wasn't as magical since I knew what went on behind the curtains. 

Drinkin' cider with some beardless lumberjack.

Beekman Cook-A-Thon #2

Tonight we're having another Beekman Cook-A-Thon, and we're going to be knocking out some more recipes from the cookbook. Check back tomorrow to see what we made and how it went.

While you wait, here's an awesome Halloweeny idea from the Hairpin. Click the image below for "Pumpkin" pies.

- Sarah

Apple Parsnip Soup

This is another recipe not from the Beekman cookbook. I've been all over any recipe with apples in it because it's the time of year where I can get them fresh from an orchard. I've been buying apples a couple times a week now, all different kinds.

For this recipe, I used golden delicious apples because they were what I had on hand. They worked well in the soup.

First I had to roast them together to soften them. Before you put your parsnips in, cut them up. I didn't, and I had to take them out of the oven and cut them up while they were hot and juicy.

When you wrap them in the aluminum foil, put some olive oil in there and a little salt. 

They can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to roast. During this time, you can go do other things. Watch some Walking Dead on Netflix. Practice your guitar. Chop up the other ingredients. 

As you can see, I have some celery leaves, celery, and a shallot all chopped up and waiting to be added.

I then went off to do other things, waiting until there was about 5-10 minutes left in the roasting process.

At that point in time I began to boil about 4 or 5 cups of chicken broth. On another burner, I heated up a pat of butter (1 tbsp approximately), and I put the celery and shallot in there until the shallots started to brown a little and the celery softened.

When the parsnips and apples were done roasting and the celery and shallots were good to go, I added them to the broth. I let it all cook in there together on medium heat to get the flavors all mixed together. While they were off having a party, I made croutons for my soup.

(That's some straight up fancy Panera magic in here.)

I used a Marble Rye bread, and I melted another pat of butter in the same skillet. Then I let the cut up bread hang out in there until it became crispy.

Man. I love bread.

After the pot of veggies and broth were done living la vida loca, I puree'd them like a champ in my blender. You could use a food processor too if you want. (I've had no luck finding a good food processor that works and doesn't sound like a hoard of zombies coming for me.)

Those little celery leaves are for garnish, which now brings it above a fancy Panera level. Add some spices to it if you want to change the flavor. Cinnamon would work, or nutmeg. 

I'm probably going to be making a lot of soups since it's soup weather, and they're easy to make. Plus, it's a convenient thing to bring in a lunch and everyone else thinks you're some sort of culinary genius when really you're just a chucklehead with a blender.

Roasted Beet Tangle

This recipe is taken from the Beekman Heirloom cookbook. It's my first one for the month of October. Next weekend I'm planning another cook-a-thon of recipes strictly from the Beekman cookbook since I have a lot of friends coming over to cook with me and then eat it all. I've noticed that when I cook for myself, I wind up with tons of leftovers. It's great because then I don't have to cook and have easy lunches to pack. It's also not so great because then I'm not cooking as many recipes as I'd like to.

Anyway, back to this recipe.

If you had told me when I was a little kid that I would someday be cooking beets and eating them because I WANTED TO, I would not have believed you. I was pretty sure that when I grew up, I was going to eat a lot of happy meals and donuts.

Thank God I didn't turn out that way. (I think fast food is pretty gross. That whole fry-drate campaign McDonald's has going on makes me gag every time I see one of the billboards when I'm driving. All I can think of is someone drinking greasy, salty fries. Ugh.)

I don't often cook with beets, and I didn't eat them often when I was little. If I did, they were canned beets. I remember reading about how the juices were used as a dye in an old book series I had when I was a little kid. I've been finding myself appreciating the colors of food more the more I cook. Especially if I'm using fresh ingredients and going to local farmer's markets or harvest festivals.

I like this recipe because it uses two main parts of the beet. It doesn't use the stems, but who wants to eat those anyway? Bugs. Rabbits. NOT PEOPLE.

So there are my beets separated from my greens all nice and washed.

Then I wrapped them in aluminum foil, keeping beets of a similar size together.

This recipe isn't out there online, but I found a really similar one here. The only difference is that I didn't use onions in mine.

I cooked the beets in the oven at 425 degrees FOREVER. (More like an hour and fifteen minutes.)

I cooked the greens separately with a little oil and some chopped up garlic. I like watching greens wilt down over heat.

When the greens were cooked and the beets were done, I added them together. Then I made a dressing out of oil, lemon juice, and mustard. (Guess which mustard? If you're thinking the Two Bears mustard, you're totally correct. That would make this recipe number two for that little quest.)

I poured that over the top, and BOOM.

I be rockin' dem beets.

What? That's not a bad joke. That's an awesome joke.

The beets were actually tasty. (Maybe because they're not from a can. Gee whiz mom, get on this.)

All Tangled up in Asparagus

First off, let me report that the wedding went perfectly. Everything was beautiful, and I had a wonderful time. The food was catered by Chianti, a local Italian restaurant, and everything was sooo good. I'm going to try to recreate the chicken and artichoke dish. Well, to the best of my ability. The cake was a double layer, with the upper tier coconut, and the lower tier chocolate. I had a slice of the coconut, and it was perfect. It was moist and light. The coconut flavor wasn't too heavy.

The bride looked beautiful, the groom looked sharp, and I think the bridesmaids looked fabulous. (Granted, I am biased since I was one of them.)

Plus, I wound up with some excellent memories to laugh about for pretty much ever. Not to mention I have a really bad pick up line to use on no one ever.

Anyway, I have a simple recipe for you. It's not from the Beekman Blog, it's a different way to eat asparagus from my usual.

And by my usual, I mean cooked asparagus. I've cooked asparagus many different ways, but I've never tried it in a cold dish. So, when I heard of the idea of slicing asparagus really thin and using it as a sort of salad, I had to try it.

First, you have to shave the asparagus down. I used a vegetable peeler, and I held onto the thick end that you usually discard. Then I cut it off and discarded it.

As you can see, they're pretty thin. They also are wet because of the moisture being released from the asparagus.

In a side bowl, I mixed 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, about 1/4c asparagus, and 1 tbsp of lemon juice.

Once I had all my asparagus shaved, I put it in a bowl, poured the mixture over it, and tossed it.

There you have it - quick, easy, and delicioso.

A Wedding!

This weekend, my friend Jess is getting married. So, I won't be cooking for a couple of days. But, the blog will return with new posts early next week. (Sunday or Monday.)

Have a good weekend! (If you're lucky, you might very well have a three day weekend.)

Blue Cheese Pizza

When you title this pizza as "Blue Cheese Pizza", it sounds normal enough. But the toppings on this pizza make it anything but normal. Onions, apples, walnuts and blue cheese.

When I read this recipe, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I mean, where's the sauce? That's one of my favorite parts of the pizza.

And it sounded more like a ...funky desert than something I'd actually want to eat.

But, I have to give it a shot since that's the purpose of this blog. I've only just started. I can't cop out now.

It calls for a ton of onions.

All right. It doesn't look like a lot in the picture.

BUT IT IS.

I didn't wind up using all of the toppings that the recipe called for. I made sure some of everything was on there, but I didn't need all of the onions, apples, or blue cheese to fully cover my dough. 

I used whole wheat dough, and I have a nice pizza baking tray which makes it easier for me. Using the wheat dough goes against everything I ever believed in as a child. I was totally into white bread and the less healthy version of anything. Then I went and grew up and sucked the fun out of everything. Now it's whole wheat this and brown rice that.

After a long session of onion cooking, I put the toppings on my pizza, heated the oven up and baked that bad boy. I was still skeptical about it until I could smell it from the oven. I couldn't believe how good it smelled. I started to get all excited to taste it.

And then it came out of the oven. Not on its side though. Blogger just seems to have this thing for uploading my pictures rotated when I didn't rotate them. I'm pretty sure this is a form of bullying, and I have no comeback.

It's crazy good. I ain't even gonna lie. It's not your traditional pizza, but it's well-worth making. It'd probably make a good appetizer if you cut it down into smaller size portions. It's light, it has a bit of sweetness, and it's not your typical pizza.

A similar recipe to the one I used can be found here.

The Hummus and Mustard Experiments

This post has nothing to do with the Beekman cookbook and everything to do with two things I love.

Hummus and a particular mustard I purchased at Harvest Fest.

I love Hummus. I love making it, and I love eating it. It's really simple to make, and I always prefer hummus I make to any I can buy. It's smoother, I control the flavor, and there's far less preservatives in it.

I also love this mustard:

I'm not a mustard kind of gal really, but this mustard has such a good flavor to it.  Plus, the guy selling it was funny, and he complimented our outfits. This appealed to my vanity, and I'm all about supporting people who do that. (That's kind of a joke. Kind of.)

And look at the ingredients in that mustard! I KNOW ALL OF IT. (And they include Guinness.)

It's made by Two Bears Provisions. 

Here's the two experiments I want to do with these things.

Hummus: How many flavors of hummus can I make that are actually good?

Mustard: How many delicious things can I make with this mustard without just throwing it on a sandwich and calling it a day?

In a perfect world, these two things would come together beautifully. 

Here are the ingredients I used:

1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp mustard (a grainy dijon would work well, but it's not as awesome as this mustard)

1/2 a garlic clove

1-2 tbsp lemon juice

1 15oz can garbanzo beans

I mixed it all together and pureed it in a blender. Then I tasted it and added more of whatever I thought it needed. 

It was everything I'd hoped and dreamed it would be.

I'm pretty excited to eat it for lunch tomorrow.

As far as these experiments go, here's one delicioso hummus, and one thing I can make with that mustard.