In Defense of Hummus
Hummus is a dip, made from chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans) and spices. As a kid, I HATED chickpeas. My mom put them in salads, in pasta fazool, in chicken soup– YUCK! I used to pick them out, they were just so awful.
My, my, how I have changed. I love chickpeas! I crave them! They are magnificent little balls of golden nutrition and delight! I feel like superwoman after eating them.
Go figure.
I usually buy the canned chickpeas, to sprinkle in my salads or eat with stews or soups. Sometimes I will dump a cupful into a small bowl, crumble feta cheese on them, add a little Ken’s Caesar Lite salad dressing, and gobble it up. Wow. I feel like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound after that!
When I spotted prepared, packaged hummus at my local supermarket yesterday, I grabbed some. Hummus is something else– you either love it or you hate it. Of course, I loved it. I loved it better than any bacon sour cream dip, than anything I’ve eaten in a while. And it was so perfect watching the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” with the kids, snacking on hummus and flat bread and olives. Yum!
OK, enough gushing. Here’s the nitty-gritty on hummus.
It’s SO GOOD FOR YOU! Really, dump that sour cream dip trash. Never look it in the eye again. I’d like to introduce you to hummus.
Here are the ingredients on the container of Cedar’s brand Roasted Red Pepper Hommus:
- Fresh steamed chickpeas
- roasted bell peppers
- red pepper strips
- sesame tahini
- water
- sunflower oil
- olive oil
- citric acid
- gum arabic
- garlic and spices
- 1/10 of 1% sodium benzoate
- potassium sorbate as a preservative
Calories: 50 per 2 tablespoons
Fat in Calories: 25
Carbs: 5g
Protein: 2g
Vitamin A: 32%
Iron: 2%
It contains no wheat gluten, no sugar, no salt. You can see it’s nutritious. The kids wrinkled their noses at it (they prefer salsa with their chips), but I was happy with my hummus and flat bread. I tried a few tortilla corn chips with it, and it was OK, but not great. The hummus was superb with a few small rolls of flat bread, and olives. Really, really good. So if you haven’t tried the hummus yet, I recommend it! I bought two containers, the Roasted Red Pepper and the Artichoke Spinach; the Red Pepper was much better.