Treats, Tweets and Toot

Do you like hummus? Since this diet started, I make it at least once a week or so and then I have something yummy to eat all week.

Hummus is a thick chickpea (garbanzo bean) dip that you make in the blender or food processor and then dip pitas, crackers and in my case, loads of fresh veggies in it.

When I first looked for recipes for hummus I learned that there are as many variations as there are people who make it. It almost always includes chickpeas, tahini (sesame paste), olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt. It's the proportions that change. I've seen recipes that start with a can of chickpeas and add 3/4 C of olive oil all the way to recipes that call for less than a tsp of oil. Lemon juice runs from a tsp to the juice of two lemons (how I like it). So when it comes to hummus, mix up a batch and taste it, then add more seasoning until it's just right.

Here's my recipe:

* Take one 15 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans are the same thing) and rinse them in a strainer.

* Throw them in the blender with about 2TBL of olive oil, the juice of one and a half - two lemons, a clove or two of garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, 2TBL of tahini paste, a dash of cumin and as much water as you need to keep the blender moving. Some people use the bean water but I heard that can give you gas and stomach upset so I use tap water.

* Puree until smooth. Dip a carrot or cracker in it and see how it tastes. Add more garlic, lemon juice or salt if needed.

I prefer mine cold but it's good room temperature too. Sometimes I'll sprinkle a little smoked chipotle pepper on top but that makes it HOT. Other folks like to add sun-dried tomatoes or roasted red-peppers.

Cauliflower, carrots, celery and broccoli are all great things to dip in hummus as are pita chips, pretzels or crackers. Some people use it as a high-protein sandwich spread.


Today I stumbled across a new web blog service called Posterous.com. It's a very trimmed down blog that you post to via email. It will then take your post and add it to Twitter and/or Flickr. Which is great because I tend to have to upload posts all over the place. It's one-stop shopping! I haven't got the Twitter/Flickr bit to work yet but I'm intrigued. Let me know if you try it out. You can find me there here.

Speaking of Twitter, I tweet all the time. Here's a link to my twitter
Twitter is a blast because it's limited to 140 characters with the idea being that you answer the question, what are you doing now? Twitter really helps me feel close to friends as I know the little moments of their day and some cool people like Cathy Zielske and Tara Whitney tweet too. So sign up and you too can know what I eat for breakfast. *snark*

And now for my good news.

I got an email from Family Fun magazine last night and they are publishing one of my ideas. Woo-hoo. Family fun is the number one magazine for families and has a circulation of over two million readers. Something of mine was in there last year but I wasn't paid. This is way better.

I need to write up a two-hundred word essay and get it back to the editor ASAP and it'll be in one of their Christmas issues. I'm getting paid one hundred bucks for it, which sadly is the most I've ever got for my writing - and for something so short!

I was just thinking the other day that this will be the first year that I got paid more for my scrapbooking than writing but now that is not the case.

HEM magazine (which has published two of my articles) has just changed editors so I don't know if my style will still be a good fit. I really liked the old editor and had a good feel for what she wanted. Someone new is always a big change. I need to start submitting again.

It was awesome to get great news during such a crummy two weeks.