food: Hummus, Chocolate Mousse, and a Lifestyle Blog

I've been a little cooking obsessed lately.  I think about foods, ingredients, recipe ideas, talk about the foods I have been making, spend hours searching for recipes, ask my friends for them, then take that all into the kitchen and experiment, sometimes ending up with great additions to my repertoire.  Some additions are just okay: a suitable meal for the given night but not anything to comment about.  A choice few are given an awful face, where I turn down my mouth and wrinkle my nose, then feel like all the time has been a waste... but it is all useful learning in cooking and how to choose recipes.  

Today I decided to make hummus, completely from scratch, using a whole pound of dried chickpeas.  I also decided it was a great day to go authentic and shell the chickpeas.  

Two and a half hours later, I had shelled the chickpeas. 

In that time frame, I had talked with my mom on the phone, listened to music, sat on my exercise ball because my back was hurting so much from being still that long, and been accompanied by Mr. Bear, my Maltese Shih Tzu all the while.  Every now and then, I would "drop" a chickpea on the floor to attract Mr. Bear's attention and his company in my journey.  Add to that, the overnight soaking of the little devils, hour of boiling them, finally making the actual hummus in my blender, then broiling jalapenos to add to it = Hummus.  Whew!  Such a process that it deserves a capital.  I went a little too "authentic" for my taste.  I thought I was a patient person, but my goodness.  

However, the finished product was quite delectable, oh so smooth, and quite a treat.  Did I say it was worth it tonight?  Perhaps.  Will I shell chickpeas for almost three hours again?  Probably not, unless we buy ourselves a farm, complete a Fall's harvest, then invite the whole neighborhood to shell chickpeas with us.

Another treat that was TOTALLY worth it- meaning it took about ten minutes to make- was Vegan Chocolate Mousse!  Whoa.  My husband actually exclaimed that word on his first taste.  Whoa to the fact that it only requires four ingredients and is amazingly rich, velvety chocolate deliciousness: dates, coconut milk, cocoa powder, and a drop or so of vanilla extract.  

An exhausting but exciting day of culinary adventures!  While both recipes were not short on time, they were extremely cheap to make.  A four pound bag of dried chickpeas is $3.99, meaning I spent about $1 in my main ingredient for hummus.  Take out the shelling and the recipe is a no brainer.

I have also been thinking lately about how to define my blog.  Probably pointless at this stage since I have only been blogging for five months now- and really only seriously for the past three- but you know how the mind wanders.  As humans we really must have our world categorized, labeled, and organized, and I suppose I have wanted to do that with The Culture Thrift.  It's not fair of me, she is still growing, deciding what she wants to be.  As I said, it's not fair.  Though I would gently (ever so softly) like to call her a lifestyle blog.  Labeling as only a fitness or fashion or whatever website is too narrow a scope... maybe "lifestyle" is not quite it, but it is a place to start and that's what she needs. 

 Okay, what I need.  She probably doesn't even need a label.