Yummus

Made my first attempt at hummus this evening. My husband and I had some extra pita bread (from some awesome chicken gyros he made the other night), so I figured this was a good opportunity.

We don't make a habit of shopping at high-end grocery stores, so my first concern was not being able to find tahini at good ol' Wal-Mart. Naturally, it was nowhere to be found. No big deal; I had seen it made without tahini before...in fact, to be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure what tahini's role is when it comes to hummus. While at the store, we did pick up chickpeas, olive oil, and a jar of roasted red pepper (no marinade, just straight-up salt water).

Concern #2 was the fact that we are without a food processor. Again, no biggie; the only reason I could foresee a food processor coming in handy for this was to drizzle olive oil through that little spout at the top, and a blender could be used the same way just as easily. The only problem was that our blender was in the dishwasher. OK, that's not the only problem; another problem was that I was too lazy to wash it by hand.

So I turned to the Magic Bullet. Even though I haven't used it for nearly as many things as the infomercial suggests, I have come to love this little contraption, so I had pretty high hopes. I had to throw everything in together, though, since you can't add things to the Magic Bullet while it's running: chickpeas, minced garlic, blotted red peppers, and olive oil. It started off well, but after a few taste tests that involved whole chickpeas, I decided that this was probably not the best kitchen appliance to use. Also, after everything was "ready," I realized that I didn't add lemon juice, and it probably could've benefited from some other spices.

I'm going to focus on the positives, though. Aside from the occasional whole chickpea, the texture was smooth and thick, but not too thick. And even without lemon juice or tahini, I thought it tasted great. After eating a couple of pitas doused with it, I decided that was my dinner and called it a night.