The Great Hummus Adventure

So after 18 months of inactivity, I am returning to the blogosphere. I just completed a course on Social Marketing and I remembered Antithetical and just how much I used to obsess over it and now I potentially have new skills I can apply to my blog.

I’m just going to get on with it and describe a recent adventure.

Healthy, yummy Hummus (photo from tofutti break on Flickr)

I like to cook. And I like to prepare food from scratch. I spend a lot of time planning my meals for the week ahead and somehow hummus found its way onto the list. However, the recipe calls for tahini. If you don’t know what it is, don’t feel bad – I had to look it up myself. It’s pretty much sesame seed butter, but it is a critical ingredient to a number of dishes. It’s almost impossible to find (especially when you have no idea what you’re looking for). And so the great Tahini Journey began. It went on for about three weeks.

On Monday I had the pleasure of attending a cooking class at the Pick and Pay Good Food Studio. If you like cooking you must check it out. I had a great time. But my point is that my culinary experience meant I would be near the really, really nice Pick and Pay that generally stocks more exotic products. I still had to ask where I would find it. Fortunately the staff are really helpful and can navigate the vast isles with ease. I had to trek across the store and the lady asked me why I want tahini. I explained that I wanted to make hummus and she was puzzled. “Why don’t you just buy it from the deli?” she asked and pointed to the other end of the store. I didn’t want to tell her that I’m actually a bit of a show off and I like to brag about my kitchen skills. So I mumbled something about preservatives. But I found tahini. It’s expensive.

Two nights later it was time to make hummus. In my head it was going to take all of five minutes because the recipe said I just dump the ingredients into the blender and blend until smooth. What the recipe did not mention was that as the chickpeas blend with the tahini, they form a paste that gets stuck in the bottom of the blender and that’s all that gets blended. So I had to do some manual moving around to get the smooth consistency I was daydreaming about.

I briefly had a fantasy about having a slave to mash my future chickpeas to make the process easier. Then I remembered that slavery is illegal. So I got over myself and decided I would come up with a better strategy while I’m stuck in traffic. The hummus came out great though. You can find the recipe here.

When it rains I want everything

Someone suggested I write a blog post about having a dress made. I really like this person. I am also very grateful to this person for the Top Gear Festival tickets. She says I am the most random person she has ever met. But I still want her to find a great dress maker in Johannesburg. Recommendations will be accepted into the comments on this post. I did not take the accusation of being random too seriously.

So instead about writing something of value I will tell the world about how I feel today and write about the weather and the consequences it has on my life.

Rain is depressing

It’s raining. And I was monumentally stupid this morning. I had two qualified doctors in my house and I could have asked for a doctor’s note saying I contracted Foot and Mouth disease over the weekend. But I am too honest to even think about this until I am sulking at the office and daydreaming about how I could be at home faking illness.

The real problem right now is that when it rains I want everything. If I saw a cake right now I would want it. If I saw a rack of ribs, I would want that too. If I see food, I will want it. And I wouldn’t even want to eat most of it. I would just want to surround myself and look at it. Or I could ignore the food mountain completely. I just want that options. And only on days that it rains.

I want a food mountain

I want the two minute noodles my colleague made, I want the cheese sandwich the other one ate. I have no idea what the third one is eating for lunch, but I want that too. I want whatever is being served for lunch at the restaurants in the area and the cookies that may or may not exist in the building next door.

Once the weather becomes nice again I am happy to go back to planning meals three days in advance and not deviating from the menu at all.