Guacamus

Guacamus! Humole! Fun with words*!

I went to Shaw's the other day. (like, a week and a half before I made this). Shaw's is not my grocer of choice, but they're next door to CVS and I had to go there, so when I knew I needed to pick up milk and other perishable staples, I figured I'd just run over to Shaw's, it'd be easiest. That day, Shaw's had a special on avocados: 88 cents each. Whoa! This is an incredible deal!! Half the time I go, avocados are $1.99 each. If I go to Big Y, with a gold coin I can get a bag of 4 avocados for $5.99 (I think the bags are usually $9.99 or around there). So I grabbed 2 avocados. And the next day, tried to figure out what to do with them.

Normally I just make guacamole. It's easy, it's delicious. But it's also more of a summer thing for me. One time I made avocado tempura, but deep frying would be harmful to the fit of my clothing right now, so that's out.

After browsing around, I found an avocado hummus recipe. It looked tasty, and different, and kind of healthy! Splendid.

And funny side note: I never got around to making it. First I wasn't in the mood, then the school week happened and it was all I could do to make a tuna salad sandwich for dinner. I kept checking on those avocados as they sat in the fridge: one was still firm-ish so I wasn't worried, but the other was becoming quite soft- yikes! Finally the day came where not wasting these lovely, inexpensive avocados was more important than grading labs. And guacamus occurred.

Guacamus
recipe based on roasted garlic avocado hummus, by This Country Girl Cooks

4 garlic cloves
1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 avocado
1/4-1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup cilantro
2-3T lime juice
1/2t cumin
1/8t (or more to taste) chipotle powder
sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste (I used a fat pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper- I figured I'd eat with salty chips/crackers and they'd provide enough salt)

Roast the garlic: peel the cloves and place on a cookie sheet (baking dish, whatever) in a 375F-ish oven for about 15 minutes, until soft. Let cool.

In a food processor, combine: garlic, chickpeas, avocado, cilantro, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 2T lime juice and the spices. Puree. Add more olive oil and lime juice if necessary (depending on the softness of your avocado, it may not be necessary. My avocado was so soft I could have mashed it when my hands. It was perfect).

Serve with tortilla chips, pita chips, cracker, carrots, cucumbers, etc.

Nutritional info:
makes approx 16oz hummus, 8 2oz servings
per serving:
170 calories
11.2g fat (1.7g sat, 1.4g polyunsat, 7.2gmonounsat)
15.5g carbs
4.5g fiber
3.5g protein
not including your dippers, of course!

And the bonus? I happened to make this just before St. Paddy's Day. Complete coincidence, but I was pretty excited when I realized my convenient timing.

*I choose to call this guacamus: I think it sounds vaguely Latin. Dictum ad tua mater**.

**I have never taken Latin, forgive my Latin grammar.

Foodie pen pals February reveal!

Oh friends, it's been so long since I posted a FPP package!! I'm so glad to be back in the group.

This month my goodies came from Tracy and she really chose well for me! She sent a big bag of granola, som delicious peanut butter sandwich cookies, honey nut chex mix, 2 luna bars and some "Ultra Spice" chai. I opened the tea immediately- I love all the Twinings Chais, but I hadn't seen the ultra spice flavor before! I'm saving the Luna bars for a Nashoba day, since sometimes I don't have a lot of time for lunch and I like to have a granola bar on my way home (since it can take me 45 min or more to get home some nights... I may or may not stop off to run some errands) and the pb cookies have been dessert a few times, along with some caramel cookie gelato- definitely hits the spot! Thank you, Tracy!!

Interested in receiving your own delicious box o' goodies?

Are you interested in joining us for Foodie Penpals next month? Here are some more details:

• On the 5th of every month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.
• You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal! 
• The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!
• You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)
• Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you are to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month. 
• Foodie Penplas is open to US, Canadian & European residents.  Please note, Canadian Residents will be paired with other Canadians only. Same with Europeans. We’ve determined things might get too slow and backed up if we’re trying to send foods through customs across the border from US to Canada and vice versa. 

If you’re from the US or Canada and are in participating for November, please CLICK HERE  to fill out the participation form and read the terms and conditions.

Tidbits

Oh, hi.

So my life has been taken over by other, stronger and more important forces. I've been cooking a bit, but I just don't have the time to tell you about it... yet. On the bright side, part of what's taken over my life is work, and it's for a good reason (it just doesn't feel like that when I get home at 11:30pm, but I can kind of see the bigger picture). I'm trying to write posts when I have large chunks of time, all at once, and the space out the publishing, but that's not as easy as I thought.

To tide you over until I can tell you about ginger ice cream, honey-cumin glazed pork and indian pudding, let me share some quick and tasty snacks.

Today I went to a special Earth Day fair, and bought apple pie bread from the Great Harvest Bread Co. It's a big flat square loaf of slightly sweet bread, stuffed with apples and cinnamon, with a sweet crumb layer on top. I'm waiting to cut into it, because I'm giving half to my parents. But the loaf is just staring at me right now, it's very difficult to wait.

I wandered into Trader Joe's the other day, and discovered this delicious snack.

Dried mango.

I recommend.

They were also giving these away. For free.