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Jun. 25th, 2012 05:47 amSo, Sabra hummus was on sale today at the supermarket. And you have realized it before, but I am a HUGE hummus fan. I've adored the stuff ever since rediscovering it in college. It's kinda funny because my first encounter with hummus was in the sixth grade during our Ancient Egypt unit.
The whole unit was a bit of a competition where the more projects (extra credit) you did, the more points you racked up and depending on how many points you got, you would move up in your Ancient Egyptian life. I think it was supposed to teach us about castes, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't move up from a slave to the Pharaoh's family all those thousands of years ago... It was a fun project though. We were broken up into groups that were Egyptian themed and each group had specific projects they could do to gain points. I was in the King Tut group. It was a good group but it became very clear that the Hieroglyphics group had the easiest assignments (all my younger siblings were counciled to be in that group) to make it up to Pharaoh. Perhaps that's why I didn't quite make it there and instead plateaued at Pharaoh's family...
To this day, I kinda regret not making more of an effort to get me over the hump. The last project I needed was to mummify a chicken and build a pyramid around it. They had detailed instructions and everything on how to prepare your store bought chicken (thankfully we didn't need to kill it ourselves to be accurate). But seriously, that's insane, right? I thought no one in their right mind would EVER do something like. A freaking whole chicken!
But apparently I was wrong. Someone did do it. Ken Griffith. That bastard. He mummified the chicken and built a sugar cube pyramid around it. And he made it to Pharaoh. OTL
But I digress. My point is that in sixth grade, we had this extremely fun, very enlightening, very involved Ancient Egypt unit in Social Studies. And at the end of it, we all dressed up as the group we ended up as and had a big party. This was in conjunction with the rest of the school so all the sixth graders at Hood River Middle participated. And I guess the people providing refreshments (the teachers) thought that since hummus is a Middle Eastern dish, it would be appropriate to serve it along with pita bread at our party.
Needless to say, I was in the sixth grade and I had a very unsophisticated palate. At that point in my life, I wasn't even really even that into Western food outside of some typical American kid staples like pizza and burgers. And I came out of that experience with a not so great opinion of hummus and an even worse opinion on pita bread. And to this day, I'm not the biggest fan of pita outside of falafel sandwiches...
It wasn't until college that I even gave hummus another shot. The dining hall at my freshman dorm (go Third North) had sandwiches named after various streets around NYU and I wanted to try them all. One of them was the Greene St. sandwich, the only sandwich for the vegetarians/vegans and even though I was wary, I still tried it. And it was amazing! I usually got it on a roll and it was hummus, caramelized onions, mushrooms, roasted peppers, pepperjack and provolone cheese and it was toasted so the cheese was all melty and delicious. I seriously think it was the cheese that won me over in regards to hummus. I am and have always been a big cheese lover and that sandwich is mighty tasty... So started my love of hummus because I needed that sandwich even after I moved to Water St. and stopped having a dining plan.
I've tried many brands (Trader Joe's version was my go-to in college) but Sabra is the undeniable best. I've since graduated to making my own hummus but I still can't get over Sabra's version. Their roasted pine nut one is my absolute favorite. Their classic version is also up there. But Sabra also isn't cheap and making your own is extremely economical, ridiculously easy, and so delicious (better or on par with a lot of the brands I've tried) so I don't usually indulge all that often. But it was 2 for 1 so I just couldn't pass it up.
I wanted to try something new with an old favorite so I wanted to get my go-to pine nut hummus. But they were out of it. So I switched to roasted garlic which is also good since I am a bit of a garlic fiend. As to the new flavor, it was either spinach and artichoke, pesto, supremely spicy or Southwest since I had the roasted red pepper and the sun-dried tomato versions before.
The Southwest one scared me. And I wasn't sure if I would like a supremely spicy hummus (even though mine has a pretty strong kick to it as well) and I absolutely abhor pesto so it was basically the spinach and artichoke one. I love artichoke and spinach is good too, but in hummus? It looked slightly greenish so it looked like it was in the hummus so I was a bit hesitant. But I bought it anyway. I still have yet to try it but I tried looking it up online to see what other people think.
The consensus seems to be they love it. But every place I go to for a review seems to be from a vegetarian or vegan. Mostly from vegans. And is it wrong, but I just can't help but question their opinion? I mean, they're vegans -- they haven't had meat in a long time, their minds aren't in the right place... Can I really trust them when they're comparing to other vegan foods? I really wonder about that...
And okay, I think there's a lot of delicious vegetarian food out there. And a lot of vegan food. At least when they're not trying to be meat. But at the same time, I can't help but think a lot of it you into it already lowering your expectations because things will never taste as good, or as right as when they're made with meat. That's why I think the best vegan dishes are ones that are just coincidentally vegan, not dishes made to be vegan and a lot of the time, I think vegans are working from a place of without and constraints and their food ends up lacking. They may end up tasty enough but they won't blow you away either.
But I guess I won't know until I actually go and taste it for myself. I have myself a box of Wheat Thins (my favorite vehicle for hummus after carrot sticks) and Wimbledon will be on tomorrow (actually, looking at the time, it probably just started) and I'm going to hopefully enjoy it all.
The whole unit was a bit of a competition where the more projects (extra credit) you did, the more points you racked up and depending on how many points you got, you would move up in your Ancient Egyptian life. I think it was supposed to teach us about castes, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't move up from a slave to the Pharaoh's family all those thousands of years ago... It was a fun project though. We were broken up into groups that were Egyptian themed and each group had specific projects they could do to gain points. I was in the King Tut group. It was a good group but it became very clear that the Hieroglyphics group had the easiest assignments (all my younger siblings were counciled to be in that group) to make it up to Pharaoh. Perhaps that's why I didn't quite make it there and instead plateaued at Pharaoh's family...
To this day, I kinda regret not making more of an effort to get me over the hump. The last project I needed was to mummify a chicken and build a pyramid around it. They had detailed instructions and everything on how to prepare your store bought chicken (thankfully we didn't need to kill it ourselves to be accurate). But seriously, that's insane, right? I thought no one in their right mind would EVER do something like. A freaking whole chicken!
But apparently I was wrong. Someone did do it. Ken Griffith. That bastard. He mummified the chicken and built a sugar cube pyramid around it. And he made it to Pharaoh. OTL
But I digress. My point is that in sixth grade, we had this extremely fun, very enlightening, very involved Ancient Egypt unit in Social Studies. And at the end of it, we all dressed up as the group we ended up as and had a big party. This was in conjunction with the rest of the school so all the sixth graders at Hood River Middle participated. And I guess the people providing refreshments (the teachers) thought that since hummus is a Middle Eastern dish, it would be appropriate to serve it along with pita bread at our party.
Needless to say, I was in the sixth grade and I had a very unsophisticated palate. At that point in my life, I wasn't even really even that into Western food outside of some typical American kid staples like pizza and burgers. And I came out of that experience with a not so great opinion of hummus and an even worse opinion on pita bread. And to this day, I'm not the biggest fan of pita outside of falafel sandwiches...
It wasn't until college that I even gave hummus another shot. The dining hall at my freshman dorm (go Third North) had sandwiches named after various streets around NYU and I wanted to try them all. One of them was the Greene St. sandwich, the only sandwich for the vegetarians/vegans and even though I was wary, I still tried it. And it was amazing! I usually got it on a roll and it was hummus, caramelized onions, mushrooms, roasted peppers, pepperjack and provolone cheese and it was toasted so the cheese was all melty and delicious. I seriously think it was the cheese that won me over in regards to hummus. I am and have always been a big cheese lover and that sandwich is mighty tasty... So started my love of hummus because I needed that sandwich even after I moved to Water St. and stopped having a dining plan.
I've tried many brands (Trader Joe's version was my go-to in college) but Sabra is the undeniable best. I've since graduated to making my own hummus but I still can't get over Sabra's version. Their roasted pine nut one is my absolute favorite. Their classic version is also up there. But Sabra also isn't cheap and making your own is extremely economical, ridiculously easy, and so delicious (better or on par with a lot of the brands I've tried) so I don't usually indulge all that often. But it was 2 for 1 so I just couldn't pass it up.
I wanted to try something new with an old favorite so I wanted to get my go-to pine nut hummus. But they were out of it. So I switched to roasted garlic which is also good since I am a bit of a garlic fiend. As to the new flavor, it was either spinach and artichoke, pesto, supremely spicy or Southwest since I had the roasted red pepper and the sun-dried tomato versions before.
The Southwest one scared me. And I wasn't sure if I would like a supremely spicy hummus (even though mine has a pretty strong kick to it as well) and I absolutely abhor pesto so it was basically the spinach and artichoke one. I love artichoke and spinach is good too, but in hummus? It looked slightly greenish so it looked like it was in the hummus so I was a bit hesitant. But I bought it anyway. I still have yet to try it but I tried looking it up online to see what other people think.
The consensus seems to be they love it. But every place I go to for a review seems to be from a vegetarian or vegan. Mostly from vegans. And is it wrong, but I just can't help but question their opinion? I mean, they're vegans -- they haven't had meat in a long time, their minds aren't in the right place... Can I really trust them when they're comparing to other vegan foods? I really wonder about that...
And okay, I think there's a lot of delicious vegetarian food out there. And a lot of vegan food. At least when they're not trying to be meat. But at the same time, I can't help but think a lot of it you into it already lowering your expectations because things will never taste as good, or as right as when they're made with meat. That's why I think the best vegan dishes are ones that are just coincidentally vegan, not dishes made to be vegan and a lot of the time, I think vegans are working from a place of without and constraints and their food ends up lacking. They may end up tasty enough but they won't blow you away either.
But I guess I won't know until I actually go and taste it for myself. I have myself a box of Wheat Thins (my favorite vehicle for hummus after carrot sticks) and Wimbledon will be on tomorrow (actually, looking at the time, it probably just started) and I'm going to hopefully enjoy it all.
