I Made Black Garlic Hummus And This Happened

So much of my, and modern society’s, lifestyle has been about doing some things as fast as possible in order to preserve “work-life balance.” In reality this has translated to doing things like taking shortcuts with food so I can watch TV because I want to recharge in order to work more. In my mind, why on earth would I spend time and effort to make something that’s so easily available, and tasty and healthy, at the grocery store?

We have a bunch of dry goods in the pantry that we’re not using but that would be a waste to throw away, so I decided to make hummus.

This means I had to override three reluctances. The first reluctance is my sneaking feeling that I am wasting time by going the long way; it’s not just about food prep, but it’s getting out the stuff I need and the cleanup too. The second reluctance is my worry about “running out” of a special ingredient (in this case black garlic powder) that I buy for a special occasion but continue to postpone using because well, I don’t want to run out. The third reluctance is my low likelihood of faithfully following a recipe. I am prone to rabbit holing and tweaking in ways that sometimes work out great and sometimes terribly. And when you tweak as you go, it’s often difficult to reproduce as desired.

The first tweak was I found some dry white beans too so now it turned into a chickpea-bean combo. I learned the thing about using baking soda while cooking the beans. I curiously incrementally checked on the bean-cooking progress. The black garlic powder had become a solid rock. So that was fun figuring out how to break it into clumps and reconstitute in hot water. I’d learned about sumac from Sean Sherman’s The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen book and added that. I used the olive oil my brother brought me from Spain which I had been similarly saving.

Then the hummus was ready. In the process, I’d wandered down some additional rabbit holes, like learning about how sea salt has a high level of micro/nano plastics because of all the plastic in the oceans. I was happy about using ingredients before it was too late. And it was delicious.

The best thing of all was experiencing the choice to imagine, not just picking which of the flavors they’re selling in the store, but real choice about each and every ingredient. The long way can be exhilarating. Next time, I’m thinking chocolate hummus.