Jacob and I had a lovely weekend in Calistoga, although the wonderfulness of California wine country may have been slightly lost on me since I'm not a wine drinker (translation: wine generally makes me make horrible faces and run for a glass of water to wash the taste away) and the famous wine-tasting tours are unexciting to me unless we're talking about new and innovative forms of torture. We did spend a nice afternoon hiking in Stevenson State Park, though. The eerie rock formations and breathtaking misty views told us that having their picture taken was against their religion, so it was just as well that we forgot the camera in our hotel room. You know, the one with the double shower and four-poster canopy bed, in the lovely Victorian bed-and-breakfast with the amazing chef. I want to go back and live there.
Today I learned three valuable lessons about homemade hummus. One, tahini looks like peanut butter for a reason. That reason is that it also smells and tastes quite a bit like peanut butter, so if you want hummus and not peanut butter, go easy on the damn tahini. Two, sauteed garlic isn't very pungent. Raw garlic is, so if you put in three cloves of sauteed garlic and can't taste a thing, don't add three more cloves of raw garlic all at once, particularly if you're only making two cups of hummus. Three, we really don't have a good food processor in this house. What does a girl have to do around here to get a well-stocked kitchen? Get a job and buy appliances herself? So unreasonable.
Posted by dianna at February 23, 2004 06:51 PMI'm a big fan of the "3 cup chefs chopper" from kitchenaid, (not to be a walking ad or anything).
It's cheap (>$40) and compact, and perfectly appropriate for hummus making.
As long as it's better than the 2-cup Hamilton Beach mini-chopper, you're welcome to advertise it as much as you like. In fact, I may even take the hint and obtain one.
*waiting patiently for some variety of paycheck*
Posted by: dianna at February 26, 2004 11:59 AMGosh, while reading your description of your weekend all I could think was: "it sounds so lovely to sit in that room and enjoy the view through the window while holding a glass of wine in one's hand."
You got the outdoor genes, and I got the drink/smoke/fight genes. I'm not sure who either of us got them from, though. Mailman? Two people entirely other than mom and dad?
Ha, and the garlic lesson was learned around here the first time Mark tried to make hummus. He read the recipe and said, "Pshaw, two cloves of garlic is nothing! I like garlic! I'll put in half the damn bulb!"
To his credit (or something), he did eat the whole thing out of stubbornness. To mine, I hid.