Mediterranean Food

I did it again.

the garlic and fresh rosemary are sizzling in the oven...

I decided I wanted to eat one dish and then created the rest of my meal around it.

In this case, it was homemade hummus, because I picked up some garbanzo beans in the bulk section at my co-op. I also picked up bulk tahini and thought, heck, I've never made hummus before, and I think I have all the ingredients, so I'm gonna do it.

all the fixings in the food processor, ready to be mixed up into hummus heaven

After the 24 hours or so of soaking-slash-cooking the beans on low in my crockpot, the rest of the process went really fast. In fact, now that I have done it, I'm ready to do it again.

Because I ingested about half the hummus in one sitting last night.

the amazing hummus; I didn't have paprika so I made do w/ cumin and fresh rosemary

I used this recipe, from Mark Bittman, which I think you can also find in How to Cook Everything. I really didn't change anything, except the amount of garlic, because this just wasn't enough. And, obviously, I used beans that were originally dry instead of canned to avoid the BPA found in canned foods.

this falafel was too good; GF/vegan AND local?!?

To complement the meal, I made falafel that I found in the freezer section of my co-op. It's gluten-free, vegan, and made locally here in Portland. Triple score. Oh, and it was delicious.

Then, I thought, what am I going to put this all on? So I made some flatbread, again from a recipe from Mark Bittman found here. Made with buckwheat flour, this is completely gluten-free and obviously vegan, and it contains about 3 ingredients.

granted, this flatbread doesn't look like much, but it tasted amazing

I also water-sauteed some frozen veggies in a pan and put everything into lettuce leaves.

ready to prepare into a lettuce wrap

I'm probably not going to stop bragging about this delicious meal anytime soon, since it was so amazing. So be forewarned.

right before it went into my mouth, NOMNOMNOM!