Homemade Hummus with Homemade Tahini and Homegrown Cucumbers Makes a Tasty Lunch

Today's lunch; homegrown cucumber, celery, rice crackers and homemade hummus. I thought I would share this today because I made my own tahini to go in the hummus and found it to be quite simple.

I started making homemade hummus a few years ago when I got a Magic Bullet and realized hummus was SUPER easy to make and yet, quite expensive at the store. Plus, I don't know why but everything at the store is sold in huge containers, I can never eat it all before it goes bad. No one sells a single person sized container of anything unless you buy one piece of fruit. 

I had at one time a large container of tahini, again, too big for one person but that is what the store had, but in searching around the kitchen, I couldn't find it. Plus I'm pretty sure I bought it in 2010 so it probably wasn't any good.

I seemed to recall tahini was really just sesame paste. Now how do you make sesame paste? I had sesame seeds left over from my flax seem cracker project so I took to the internet to see how to make the paste. It's just sesame seeds and olive oil. Simple!

How to make tahini:

1. Toast some sesame seeds. This doesn't take long. I burnt the first batch I toasted in the time it took me to get a lemon and olive oil out; the second batch was better. For one Magic Bullet container worth of hummus, you only need a few hand fulls of sesame seeds.
2. In a food processor or Magic Bullet, add sesame seeds and a little olive oil. Not too much, always can add more. If you are using a Magic Bullet, use the smallest container.

 Mine maybe had a little too much oil but that was ok with me since I was adding it to the garbanzo beans with more oil to make the hummus.

How to make hummus with the Magic Bullet: 

1. Put a full can of garbanzo beans in the tallest container for the Magic Bullet.
2. Squeeze a little lemon juice in with the beans. Not too much, you can always add more. 
3. Add one or two garlic gloves.
4. If necessary and desired, you can add water or chicken or vegetable broth until the consistency is what you want. 

 I did have to add some water to get it to blend all the way. I stopped the Magic Bullet a few times and stirred the hummus to make sure all the whole beans were gone.

You can of course add other things to your hummus. Experiment and try different flavors!

This still makes a lot of hummus for one person but at least it costs WAY less. Way less? Yes. A can of beans cost maybe $1.50, a couple of cents for sesame seeds ( I used 2-3 hand fulls to make the tahini.), nominal costs for lemon juice, two garlic gloves, olive oil. The whole thing maybe cost $2.00.

In comparison, the rice cracker package cost $3.00. And don't get me started on organic cucumbers. I went to the grocery store recently and saw organic cucumbers for $2.19! EACH! Mine today was basically free since I already made up for the cost of the plants I bought with the first 4 cucumbers I cut off.