A cure for what ails ya

April 8, 2008 at 5:49 am (Baking, Eat Healthy!, Greek Food, Recipes, Snacks, Sourdough)

Work is stressing me out bad!  I felt like I was falling behind after being gone for weeks.  Then my coworker left to have her baby and I have had to pick up her duties as well as mine.  I have been working long hours and I haven’t been eating as well as I should.  I’m still cooking but in amounts that haven’t gotten us through the week and I have been relying on a lot of restaurant food for the past few weeks.  Such bad habits I have and they are too, too easy to fall back on! 

 

It is such a vicious circle.  I am stressed so I eat bad things which makes me tired so I don’t get any exercise so I get more stressed and more tired and eat bad things and so on and so and so on.

 

Yesterday, I decided to slow the merri-go-round I have been on and do some simple baking to go with something that feels so restorative to eat.  I made a very whole-wheat version of my sourdough pitas to go with some sun dried tomato hummus.  The pitas contained the usual white flour starter I have cultivated but the dough was entirely whole-wheat flour aside from a half cup of white flour.  The bread came out very hearty but scrumptious.  The hummus was my take on a hummus I sometimes buy at Trader Joes.  The hummus from TJs is quite sweet.  Mine has a fuller flavor due to using the oil from the sun dried tomatoes and a healthy dose of Aleppo pepper.  Aleppo pepper is a Middle Eastern pepper that has a nice heat and a complex flavor.  It truly complements the sweet tomato flavor in this hummus.  If you can acquire some, make sure to use it in this recipe.  As an alternative, cayenne in a smaller amount will do just fine.

 

Eating these two homemade goodies together made me feel happy and very restored.  I’m not sure if it was the fiber and minerals in the garbanzo beans or calcium in the tahini or vitamin C from the garlic and lemon juice or the antioxidants in the olive oil or the lycopine from the sun dried tomatoes but this snack was definitely a cure for what was ailing me!

 

Sun Dried Tomato Hummus

 

2-3 cloves of garlic

½ cup sun dried tomatoes in oil, drained

3 tbsp olive oil from the jar of sun dried tomatoes

1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans

Salt to taste

6 tbsp tahini

Juice of one lemon

½ tsp Aleppo pepper or a dash or two of cayenne to taste

Liquid from garbanzo beans as needed

 

In a food processor, chop the garlic.  Add the sun-dried tomatoes and pulse until the tomatoes are finely chopped.  Measure out 3 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and add the oil to the tomatoes and garlic.  (Add more olive oil to your jar of tomatoes to replace the oil you took and cover the tomatoes so that they don’t spoil).  Drain the can of garbanzos in a sieve over a bowl.  Reserve the liquid from the beans.  Add the beans, lemon juice, tahini and Aleppo pepper to the bowl of the food processor.  Process until mostly smooth.  Add liquid from the beans a tablespoon at a time with the processor running until the hummus is a smooth consistency.  I used about 5 tbsp of liquid.  You may use more or less depending on the texture you like for your dip.  Taste the hummus and add salt to taste, pulsing a couple of times to mix.  Enjoy with fresh pitas.

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