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This is a really simple hummus recipe and is a great base for making various flavored versions.

I have made this hummus many times and I like to use it to make simple healthy sandwiches as well as just dip stuff in it.

This time I made a super delicious hummus and sprouts sandwich. Exciting, huh? Do you want to run out to the store right now and make this?! Well it is no cheesy, buttery, meat filled sandwich, but it is tasty, fresh, and satisfying. I enjoy the various kinds of sandwich sprouts, so that is what I topped my hummus with . I don’t really have a favorite sprout, I will just buy whatever looks the best that day. If they look very wet and/or have an unpleasant odor, I don’t buy them. You can find them in the produce section of your grocery store, usually near the fresh herbs. If you don’t enjoy sprouts, you can top this sandwich with cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olives, sliced chicken or turkey, etc., or anything else you can think of.

This hummus recipe comes from our good friend Dianna. She gave it to me a while ago, and I have finally gotten around to writing about it. Sometimes I am really lazy.

Dianna’s Easy & Delicious Hummus
by Sara at imafoodblog.com

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans or 2 cups of cooked garbanzo beans, reserve bean liquid
• 2-3 garlic cloves, to taste
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1-2 lemons, zested & juiced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Directions

1. If using dried garbanzos: soak dried beans overnight (8-12 hours) in a bowl of water in the fridge. Then boil the beans in a large pot of water until the beans reach the desired consistency (the desired consistency = soft and edible). Reserve some of the bean cooking liquid for the hummus.
* Note - If I go through the trouble of cooking the dried beans, I make more than I need for this recipe. Then I freeze them in small ziploc bags in 2 cup servings and cover them with the bean cooking liquid. They freeze well and then I can just pull out a bag when I am in the mood for some good hummus or other bean dip. I believe last time I did this I made 2 cups of dried beans and got about 6 cups of cooked beans out of it.
2. If you are using canned beans - drain the beans and reserve the liquid.
3. In a large food processor, add the beans, garlic, tahini, lemon zest, lemon juice, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. You may want to start on the lower end of the garlic and lemon juice and then add more if needed to taste. Pulse until the beans are broken up into a thick paste consistency.
4. With the processor running, add the olive oil in a slow steady stream (think pesto). You will most likely also need to add some of the reserved bean liquid (especially if you have used dried beans) or water if you did not keep the bean liquid. Stream in the reserved bean water or regular water until the desired consistency is reached. Allow the mixture to process for at least a minute or two to completely break up the beans. I like my hummus to be very light and silky and smooth - not stiff and thick. To achieve this, I usually add between 1/4 - 1/2 cup of bean water and I make sure that the beans are totally pulverized. If you don’t let the food processor do its thing for long enough, your hummus will be chunkier and a bit grainy. Just think about the consistency of your favorite hummus and try to emulate that.
5. Adjust the salt and pepper and other seasonings to taste.
6. To store - place in a plastic container and then coat the top with some more olive oil (this will keep it moist) and sprinkle some more paprika on top (a bit more flavor and a nice color). Hummus is best eaten at room temperature.

If you like this recipe, you may also like my roasted red pepper hummus.

From this:

To this:

And then to this:

So simple and yummy:

(BTW - how do you like my cheap Ocean City hotel room cups. Nothing but the finest for imafoodblog!)

This is the second granola recipe I have ever made for myself, and I am now officially in love with making my own granola. It is so much tastier than what I buy in the store and I can personalize it with ingredients that I like. It is also easy to ensure that what you are making is a healthy and sensible snack because you have control over the quantity and quality of what is being used.

My first experience with granola was Ellie Krieger’s nutty granola. Then a few weeks ago I saw this Strawberry Banana granola over at our good friend lisa is cooking. The original recipe is by none other than Michael Ruhlman, so it already had winning status in my book before I even made it.

I was so pleased with this way this granola came out. Basically, you create a fruit puree that you mix with your granola ingredients and then bake it low and slow until all the liquid has been absorbed into the oats. This creates a really lovely subtle fruity flavor to complement the richness of the nuts, which is all balanced out by some flavorful dried cherries.

I altered the recipe a bit to scale it down (the original recipe makes an enormous amount) and I also lightened it up and eliminated the refined sugar. One important thing to note for this recipe is not to use more liquid than called for. If there is too much liquid the granola will start to burn before it is all absorbed and then you will have burnt and soggy granola. Let’s just say I really made this granola twice, with the first burnt and soggy batch going straight into the garbage.

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Pasta is the love of my foodie life. If I am looking for comfort, I always go with pasta. It is probably the thing I crave most, and we eat pasta for dinner at least once a week.

So I was happy to make this week’s Craving Ellie pick, chosen by Farah of Confessions of a Novice Baker, Linguini with Shrimp & Vegetables.

I have actually made this recipe before as written and with variations. I usually like to melt a few anchovies into the olive oil, add some fresh thyme, and I cook the tomatoes longer than Ellie calls for. This time though, I added some chanterelle mushrooms because we got them for a steal at Costco over the weekend, and I added some fresh capers that our friend Dianna brought us back from Italy. We are generally not caper people, but these were so briney and delicious. I think Dianna described them as a very capery caper. Thanks Dianna!

Yay for Chanterelle mushrooms!

Yum!

Here is my recipe as I made it this time. It was great! You end up with a really light but flavorful sauce bulked up with lots of yummy veggies and shrimp. And of course something like this is forever adaptable to what you like and what you have on hand.

Pasta with Shrimp & Vegetables
Adapted by Sara at imafoodblog.com from Ellie Krieger
The Food You Crave, page 160-161
Serves 4

• 1 pound spaghetti or linguini
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 8 ounces Chanterelle or any other mushroom
• 1 bunch asparagus stalks, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 container cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup capers
• 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 cup freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Freshly grated Parmigianno-Reggiano cheese

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to the directions on the box. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water.
2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over a medium-high heat. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute.
3. Add the mushrooms and saute until all the water has cooked out and evaporated.
4. Add the asparagus and cherry tomatoes and saute until the tomatoes begin to break down.
5. Add the capers, lemon juice, white wine, and the reserved cup pasta water (as needed) to the skillet. Let simmer until the liquid is reduced by about half.
6. Add the shrimp and cook for 3-4 minutes, until they turn pink. Stir in the parsley and then add the pasta to the pan and mix. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Add a healthy dousing of Parm. cheese to each plate.

Do you know that the Irish would carve turnips into jack-o-lanterns instead of pumpkins on Halloween? I just heard that on the History channel.

Pumpkin is not one of my favorite ingredients, I don’t hate it, I just don’t love it. Though I have been more open to using and trying things with pumpkin lately. So I was excited to make these muffins. Although I am always be happy to try a new muffin recipe, especially an Ellie Krieger one. This recipe is a pretty standard low fat muffin recipe. The fats are canola oil, eggs, and low fat buttermilk. And the actual flavor of the muffin is very much like a spice cake with a hint of pumpkin.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe, which can be found here.

• I used 100% all-purpose flour
• I added 50% more of all the spices since some were saying these were bland
• I only used 2 tbsp of molasses since that is all I had left
• I left out the pumpkin seeds because I did not want to buy them just for this
• I added in a handful of ground flax seed to the batter

Overall I really enjoyed these muffins. Ellie’s muffin recipes have not disappointed me yet. There was a nice flavor to the muffin with the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg, though I think there is room to improve by changing the amounts. It was also pretty moist and did not have the gross gummy dense texture that some low fat muffins can have.

I think that some golden raisins in the muffin might be good, I will try that next time. I also loved 24carrots idea on the Tell All to substitute maple syrup for the molasses. I may also try replacing one of the eggs with another cup of pumpkin and see how that goes. This would make it healthier as well as allow me to use up a whole small can of pumpkin instead of only half a can.

Bottom line: These muffins were very good, I will definitely make them again and try different variations.

Great pick by Amanda of Oddball Oven Mitt for this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly.

This week it was my turn again to pick something for Craving Ellie in My Belly, and I chose a New York Breakfast.

Like Ellie, I grew up in New York (I may have mentioned that a bazillion times on this blog already), and thus I grew up eating lots of bagels with cream cheese and various types of smoked fish. My favorite being nova lox. I know this is something that people either love or hate, so I apologize to my Craving Ellie girls who fall in the latter category.

However, I was in New York a few weeks ago and every time I go I always ingest tons of lox while I am there and then bring some back with me and freeze it. So I was inspired by my trip up there to pick this recipe since I knew I would be flush with smoked fish.

Before we get to the recipe, let’s talk fish. Lox, nova, nova lox - it’s all the same thing. And what it is is cured and cold smoked salmon. Yum! It is the stuff of dreams (well, my dreams). The name is derived from the German word “lachs” and the Yiddish word “laks", both meaning salmon. Nova can sometimes be confused with smoked salmon, which are indeed two completely different things. Smoked salmon is hot smoked, so it is cooked, which provides a very different final texture and flavor compared to a cold smoked salmon. Cold smoked salmon is technically raw because it never reaches over 90F. You may have also heard of Gravlax, which is a Nordic preparation of salmon. In Gravlax, the salmon is cured with a spice rub usually containing salt, sugar, paprika and dill. It is then weighed down to push out all the moisture and cures for about 3 days. Gravlax is not smoked at all, so it is also a raw application of salmon. I love salmon - raw and cooked - and all of these different preparation are delicious. However, nova remains my favorite.

This sandwich is really simple to make and it does not have many ingredients. So that is why it is important that all the ingredients are top quality, because you will taste everything. I hope everyone who made this was able to find good lox. I prefer to get mine from a deli where they slice it off the fish themselves on site. I try to stay away from the vacuum sealed stuff, but it will do in a pinch. I also tried some lox from Whole Foods once and found it to be horrendous. This is why I usually don’t buy it unless I am in New York, but I am bit of a snob, so just ignore me.

I made my New York Breakfast a bit different than Ellie’s directions.

Here are my changes:

1. I used thinly sliced rye bread instead of pumpernickel.
2. I used full fat chive cream cheese instead of neufchatel cheese. I did this because Nick and I have decided that besides the fact that NY bagels are superior to every other bagel, another reason why our NY bagel sandwiches are always so good is because of the delicious homemade cream cheese you get at some of the bagel shops and delis. So I picked up some quality cream cheese from a NY style bagel store near my office in Maryland. Since I got chive flavored cream cheese (my favorite) I did not add extra chives.
3. I left out the cucumber and tomato.

So my sandwich consisted of well toasted rye bread, cream cheese, thinly sliced red onion, lox, and some more red onion. I hope everyone who made this enjoyed it. I sure did. And this is not the only way I like to eat lox, check out my post about lox, eggs, and onions. Also yum!

Lox:

And yummy cream cheese:

I have been in a bit of a funk lately with blogging, and life in general. I am so busy doing things that I don’t really want to be doing (i.e. soul sucking work) and quite frankly it is depressing, and it makes me not want to do much of anything when I actually have free time.

So I haven’t really been posting much here or even reading many blogs, and the boys certainly don’t pick up the slack there. Do you even remember the boys anymore?

I have been cooking and baking though, and I made 6 loaves of challah, among other things, last week while on vacation. I will post about that soon.

I feel like a bit of a deadbeat Craving Ellie leader, and I apologize to my girls for not updating the website as often and not really commenting much on everyone’s posts. I have been cooking along each week, and Nick and I did enjoy this week’s pick from one of our most enthusiastic Craving Ellie girls, Joanne of Apple Crumbles. (If you haven’t checked out Joanne’s new and improved site already, take a gander, it looks great!) Joanne, ever the vegetarian, chose Black Bean Mexican Style Pizza.

This is basically a homemade black bean dip spread on a tortilla, topped with tomatoes and cabbage and then baked in the oven for a few minutes. It was pretty tasty. The homemade bean dip is definitely a keeper. Nick enjoyed his “pizza” more than I did, but that may have been because he insisted on having cheese on his. I was a good girl and ate my exactly as the recipe called for. The only change I made was that I used canned whole tomatoes instead of fresh.

I made the bean dip a day ahead, so this was a super quick meal that I made on Monday night. The Monday night where I came home from work at 5pm and then had to leave again at 7:30pm to go to an 8pm meeting. yuck.

This is a solid pasta dinner that I have made a handful of times. I like it because the sauce is quick and easy but still flavorful. Perfect for the times when I don’t have any marinara in the freezer.

It is based on a recipe I found in the June 2008 issue of Bon Appetit for Rigatoni with Spicy Sausage - Tomato Sauce, Arugula and Parmesan…and breath. Really, who is naming their recipes these days? (Wow, I just learned that it’s arugUla not arugAla. That explains my difficulty finding this recipe link.)

So, the basis of this dish is a quick tomato sauce that cooks for about 30 minutes with onion, garlic, red wine, spicy sausage, tomatoes, arugula, basil, oregano, and parmigiano cheese.

The changes I make to this are that I use only crushed tomatoes instead of crushed and diced (texture thing), spicy chicken sausage instead of pork, and spinach instead of arugula. Sometimes I break the sausage up into the sauce like recipe states, and other times I poach the sausage, slice it and then add it to the sauce. Sometimes I use all hot sausage and other times a mix of hot and sweet. You could also easily used a pre-cooked andouille or chorizo in here as well. It is very adaptable to what you feel like doing at the time.

This is a nice hearty meal that is super easy to put together, which is a must have for me during the week. I really look forward to coming home every night and having a nice hot meal with Nick. After a day of really watching what I eat, I love to be able to fill my tummy with some comforting yet healthy (or at least somewhat healthy meal). It is a way to reward myself and unwind from the day. I sound like that stupid “family table” commercial, but I think it is true. My family almost always ate a dinner together every night when I was growing up and I think it is important to continue that even if it is only Nick and I.

I will be submitting this to Rachel of The Crispy Cook for Presto Pasta Nights, a great weekly pasta roundup founded by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast.

The recipe with my changes is after the jump.

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This weeks Craving Ellie in My Belly is Chicken Sate with a Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce. It was chosen by the hilariously funny Cathy of The Tortefeasor. It can be found at the aforementioned Food Network link or on page 54-55 of The Food You Crave. This is in the appetizer section of the book, but I decided to make it into dinner portions and serve it with some rice.

This recipe starts with marinating the chicken in a mixture of chicken stock, lite coconut milk, soy sauce, shallot, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar, lime zest, and ginger. I marinated my chicken for about 8 hours instead of the 1 hour Ellie suggests. The chicken was very flavorful on it’s own and my favorite part was the flecks of lime zest that stuck to the chicken from the marinade.

I enjoyed skewering the chicken but I only got about 6 skewers instead of 8. I guess I over stuffed my skewers, but it really did not matter since it was just the two of us. I did only use 1 pound of chicken breast and I felt like it was a generous amount of chicken for dinner. I couldn’t finish it all. However, Nick, who increasingly complains that he is always so hungry finished all of his and the rest of mine.

The peanut sauce was very good, similar to but definitely not the same as the sauce from the lime peanut noodles that we made a few weeks ago. The dipping sauce was made from peanut butter (I used up the rest of my homemade PB ), chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, lime juice, garlic, chili flakes, red curry paste, and shallot. I think I liked this sauce better, and I was pleased to see that Nick enjoyed it as well. I was worried that this would end up being a pizza night because he is not a big fan of peanut sauces or sauces in general on his chicken. However, to my pleasant surprise he not only tolerated but sincerely liked the sauce. I left out the red pepper flakes because I don’t really like any heat in my food. Though I did think the sauce still had a bit of a kick from the green curry paste (the store was out of red curry paste - but they smell the same to me - very strong and kind of gross).

Instead of tossing the leftover coconut milk I decided to make some rice with it. I combined 1 cup of light coconut milk, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of uncooked basmati rice, 1/4 tsp of grated fresh ginger, and a splash of lime juice. Just cook it up like you would normally cook rice, this took about 15 - 20 minutes. The rice was very creamy and it definitely retained flavor from the coconut milk. Though I could not taste the ginger or lime at all, so if I make this again, I would increase both.

Overall this was a very tasty dinner and I would absolutely make this chicken and the dipping sauce again.

You may recall some weeks ago that I posted about strawberry bread that I made that was loaded with butter and marscapone cheese. Yum! It was delicious.

Now I bring you strawberry muffins. These are not nearly as rich and delicious as the strawberry bread. However, the good news is that I can actually eat more than just a sliver without gaining 10 pounds.

I bought a huge container of strawberries and I had to use them up before they turned on me. I had seen this recipe from Jen at Savor the Thyme a while back and it popped in my head as the perfect way to put these berries to good use.

These were pretty tasty, and I also think they are the healthiest muffins I have made in a while. They were a tad dense and not as tender as I would have preferred, but they were a good low fat breakfast muffin.

Since I used Jen’s recipe almost as written, I am going to send you over to her site for it. The only change I made was that I did not boil the strawberries down before adding them to the batter, I just added fresh cut berries. You can find the recipe here for Strawberry Muffins.

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly is stuffed turkey burgers, chosen by the lovely Peggy of Pantry Revisited. These were good, not my favorite, but they were good. Lean ground turkey is stuffed with mozzarella cheese, roasted red peppers, and I added jalapenos as well. To stuff them, you create 8 small patties, flatten them, place your stuffing on top of one, and then top it with another patty and pinch the edges closed. This is pretty easy as long as you don’t over stuff the burgers.

I don’t really like to make turkey burgers because I am always worried that they will not be cooked through, and then I end up over cooking them and that’s gross. I also find that ground turkey gets so dry, so to combat that I used half ground turkey breast and half ground thigh meat. This gave the burger a nice flavor and helped it from totally drying out while my neurosis over cooked these burgers.

The recipe is pretty simple and Ellie barely calls for any seasoning of the meat. Just some salt and pepper once the patties are formed. I luv ya Ellie, but come one, this turkey needs some flavor. It just so happened that the night I made these, Nick came home with a package of Emeril products from FoodBuzz. So I added some of Emeril’s original essence into the meat as well as some Worcestershire sauce. I am not really into Emeril, but I enjoyed his essence, which is just salt, paprika, black pepper, granulated garlic, spices (hmmm?), and onion powder. We also topped our burgers with some of Emeril’s kicked up horseradish mustard. Thanks Emeril and FoodBuzz!

So, we have eaten these burgers twice. I made a full recipe of 4 burgers and froze 2 of them for another night. When I made the second set of burgers, I flattened them so that they would cook quicker and then I served them on some flat naan bread that I had in the house. I also topped each burger with a slice of Monterey Jack cheese. This was really good, and I liked the burgers better served this way versus a regular thick fat burger on a roll. (I like my big thick burgers to be made of fattening juicy red meat) I really enjoyed the bites with the roasted red pepper. I think if I make these again, I would chop up the red pepper into small pieces and mix it into the meat instead of stuffing them. We ate this with a simple salad and some baked potato chips. This was a great and super easy dinner. Thanks for a great pick Peggy!