The RTK/TFW Project: Collin's "Thomas" Hummus

TFW has a new cookbook coming out. If you can't beat 'em join 'em, right? Resident poster Silimom offered to give the recipes a fair shake, following them as closely as possible and getting her family's input, too. Other posters might chime in with their attempts as well as we go along. So in the spirit of the Julie/Julia Project, in which government worker Julie Powell spent one year cooking her way through every recipe of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, here is our Reality T.V. Kids/The Former Wife Project, as we cook our way through Kate Gosselin's Love Is In the Mix.

First up: Collin's "Thomas" Hummus prepared by Silimom

The Cost

Since Kate has stated in the past that she cooks with ingredients labeled “organic”, I decided to do the same in order to keep the recipe as true as possible to the way she might make it at home. With that in mind, I grabbed my reusable bags and headed to my local Whole Foods.

Whole Foods is an experience, for anyone who hasn’t been to one yet. It’s as if they filter the air with some sort of chemical to make you feel more virtuous and healthy once you walk through the doors. I don’t tend to shop here, as a rule, because they don’t tend to carry the convenience foods my family eats. I do like to go here for my meats and, until the farmer’s market opened up down the street, sometimes vegetables and fruits, especially ones my local Safeway doesn’t carry on a regular basis. We also tend to call Whole Foods “Whole Paycheck” because the prices, for the most part, tend to be higher, especially on their convenience foods.

Here’s what I bought, including the prices:

Organic 365 Vegan Pita Chips with Sea Salt 9 oz $2.79
Organic 365 Tahini $5.99
Organic 365 Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Cold Pressed, 16.9 fl oz) $5.99
Organic 365 Garbanzo Beans 15 oz $1.19 each = $3.57 for 3 cans (I couldn’t find 16 oz
cans anywhere)
Total spent: $18.29

Now, Kate also calls for 18 Tablespoons or 1.125 cups of lemon juice. Whole foods sold a 2lb organic bag of lemons for $5.99 or individual organic ones at $0.99 each. However, I have both half a bottle of Safeway reconstituted lemon juice (15 Fl. Oz. @ $2.79 per bottle) and also a lemon tree (or rather my neighbors have a lemon tree that happens to hang over my fence) and while they are not certified organic by the USDA, I feel fairly confident these lemons will be close to organic, as they do nothing to the  tree - no pesticides, no fertilizer, etc. I also had garlic and salt at home, however here’s their cost from the Safeway, where I purchased them:

Garlic (non organic) - $0.79
Safeway Iodized Salt (non organic) $0.94

So total cost of combined Whole Foods and Safeway ingredients: $26.06. Now, if I had bought all the ingredients at Safeway, which is where I usually shop, this would have been my bill:

Safeway O Organic Garbanzo Beans 15 oz: $1.33 per can/$3.99 total
Safeway O Organics Extra Virgin Olive Oil 16.9 fl oz - $8.49
Safeway Open Nature Pita Chips with Sea Salt 8 oz- $2.50
Safeway Lemons (regular - could not find the organic price online) - $3.29 for a 2lb bag
Whole Foods 365 Organic Tahini Paste - $5.99
Garlic (non organic) - $0.79
Safeway Iodized Salt (non organic) $0.94

(They didn’t have Tahini Paste at Safeway, so I would have still needed to pick that up at WF. )

Total: $25.99

I’ll admit, I was surprised here. I assumed that Safeway would be cheaper, even with  buying organic. Okay, maybe I’ve been giving Whole Paycheck a bad rap for years. But what would the cost be, I wondered, if I bought primarily non-organic, which is my typical shopping habit?

Safeway Garbanzo Beans 15 oz - $1.09 per can/$3.27 total
Safeway Verdi Extra Virgin Olive Oil 17 fl. oz. - $5.99
Safeway Open Nature Pita Chips with Sea Salt 8 oz. - $2.50
Safeway Lemons - $3.29/2lb bag
Whole Foods 365 Organic Tahini Paste - $5.99
Garlic (non organic) - $0.79
Safeway Iodized Salt (non organic) $0.94

Total: $22.77

Okay, so going organic, at least for this recipe, isn’t all that much more expensive than the non organic. However, considering a 10 oz package of Sabra Roasted Garlic Hummus runs me $5.49, I think I’d save myself the $18 and just buy that. It’s very yummy and since only my husband and I eat hummus at our house, it lasts us about a week just fine. However, to really know if “do it yourself hummus” is a value, I’d have to figure out the individual serving cost of the homemade version vs the prepared, store
bought hummus. Sabra’s 10 ounce container, which is what I buy, serves 10, so I’ll use that serving size in my comparison.

Whole Foods: $2.61
Safeway Organic:  $2.59
Safeway Conventional: $2.27
Sabra Hummus: $0.55

Cost grade: D - The organic ingredients were cheaper then I thought they’d be, especially when compared to conventional products, however at 55 cents per serving, the Sabra hummus is much cheaper.

The Process

I decided to use a blender rather than my food processor so I could be as true to Kate’s recipe as possible. I drained the chickpeas, putting a small, glass bowl under the wire colander to collect the juice. Normally, I would also rinse the chickpeas, but, again, I was going for authenticity here.

Next, I measured out my lemon juice. For the record, I have a hard time with her units of measurement. I mean, how hard would it have been to google “18 Tbsp to ounces?” It took me less than 30 seconds. By the way, 18 Tbsp is 9 fluid ounces. Wouldn’t that be easier for most home cooks? I mean, since lemon juice in a bottle is measured in ounces, not tablespoons, after all. Or if you wanted to use measuring cups, it’s 1 C plus 2 Tbsp of juice.

I used up my bottle of reconstituted lemon juice (non-organic, I know, but I just couldn’t  spend $5.99 for a bag of lemons.) which gave me about 6 oz and supplemented this with 3 lemons from “my” tree, which yielded 3 oz (FYI, one lemon yields about one and a half ounces of juice. I just used what I needed to make 9 oz. total).

The rest was pretty simple. My husband minced the garlic for me and then we literally dumped everything in the blender and hit “puree”. In about 3-5 minutes, we had hummus.

So, for ease of directions I give this recipe an “A-”. The minus is in regards to the how she lists her units of measurement.

The Taste Test

The guinea pigs in this situation were myself, my husband and my 8 year old daughter. The texture was not as smooth as I could make it in my food processor but overall it was pretty good. It certainly wasn’t overly grainy. It was, however, very thick. It was also EXTREMELY tart because of the amount of lemon juice. In fact, both my husband and I agreed that the acidity of the lemons really overpowered the garlic and sesame taste, making them virtually undetectable. I think reducing the lemon juice by half, increasing the garlic by 2 additional cloves, and adding a tablespoon or two of water to the blending process would help both the flavor and the thickness.

My 8 year old tasted it with her finger and said “I don’t like this hummus.” Now, in Kate’s defense, my 8 year old hates hummus anyway, but she was a good sport and tried some. Both my husband and I finished our 1/4 cup portions, which we ate with pre-bagged organic pita chips and baby carrots, so it certainly was not inedible. I would probably give it about a 3 on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being inedible and 5 being the best thing I ever ate. My husband gave it a 3 also, saying “It’s a serviceable hummus”.

Grade for Taste: C - Just way too much lemon juice.

Four days later, we still have about half of the hummus left in the fridge. My husband and I are working through it slowly.

Nutrition

Because I use the app My Fitness Pal, I can use their recipe nutrition calculator to get an idea of what the nutritional breakdown of her food is. For those of you who are interested, here it is:

Total per serving:

Calories 342
Carbs 26
Fat  22
Protein 10
Sugar  4
Fiber   9

Wrap Up

My biggest issue with her recipe isn’t the taste. I can tweak that easily and honestly if I just cut the lemon juice in half, it probably would be good (a grade of B).  It is the amount of hummus her recipe makes that is more of an issue for me. It could certainly feed 9 people easily. But I personally don’t need that much food. As you can see from the picture, her recipe filled a pretty large bowl. Kate needs to remember that not everyone has 8 kids. Now, if she were just posting this on her website, that would be one thing. Sure, people can cut it in half themselves. But if you’re putting out a cookbook, you need to respect your audience and most of the people who might buy this book have 2-3 kids tops. If this is going to be the standard result, it’s going to be way too much food for my family and most will likely go to waste. I think the next recipe I make, I will try to cut it in half and hopefully that won’t alter the flavor/taste significantly.

Overall, this was a fun experiment and I am looking forward to more “Cooking Dangerously” with Kate Gosselin.