This is from "The Book of New Israeli Food" by Janna Gur BASIC HUMMUS DIP Ingredients (serves 8-10) 1lb 2oz. small dry chickpeas 1Tblsp + 1/2 tsp baking soda 1cup raw top quality tahini 1Tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice 2 cloves garlic, crushed salt to taste Directions 1. Soak the chickpeas overnight in a large bowl of cold water with 1 Tblsp of baking soda. 2. Drain and rinse the chickpeas and put them in a large pan. Add water until it reaches 1 inch above the chickpeas. Add remaining 1/2 tsp of baking soda and bring to a boil. Cook covered over low heat for 2-3 hours, until the chickpeas are very soft. Cool slightly, drain and save some of the cooking liquid. 3. Put the chickpeas in a food processor, add 2/3 cup tahini and process until smooth. If the paste is too thick, add a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid. Season with lemon, garlic, and salt; taste and adjust the seasoning. For a richer creamier version, add the remaining tahini and process until the hummus is completely smooth and fluffy, *****Galilee Style Hummus Set aside 1 cup of chickpeas. Puree the rest with 1/2 cup tahini and the seasonings. Add the whole chickpeas and mix, slightly mashing the chickpeas. The texture should remain somewhat chunky.

Beth, The only real issue with planting garlic from the grocery store is that garlic is daylength sensitive and the variety you buy in the store might need a longer daylength than we have here to induce bulbing. However, every kind I've ever bought and planted has grown well and bulbed for me, so the chance of that is slim. The secondary issue is that garlic, like potatoes, is sprayed with an anti-sprouting chemical to keep it from sprouting while in the grocery store on in your kitchen pantry. However, the anti-sprouting agents only last for so long and the garlic does eventually sprout (as do potatoes in the pantry!). I often buy my garlic for planting at a gourmet grocery store in Texas because they label it with its proper name, and the garlic there is organic and hasn't been sprayed with anti-sprouting chemicals. I've never had any trouble getting it to sprout and grow. I've linked the SSE instructions for planting garlic. They were written by the late Darrell Merrell of the Tulsa, OK, area. Whatever you do, make sure it is in well drained soil, preferably in a raised bed several inches above the grade of the surrounding soil. If you don't have raised beds, just mound up enough soil above the ground to plant in that mound. Garlic will rot during an excessively wet winter and spring, and according to NOAA, we should be expecting a wet winter. As long as you break the cloves apart carefully without bruising them and plant them as the guide directs, you'll have garlic bulbs next summer. They key is to plant in the fall. You plant in the fall, cold weather induces growth. In the early summer, the green plant parts begin to turn yellow and brownish and it is time to harvest. When you planted a bulb of store-bought garlic, did you plant the whole bulb? Did you plant in spring? Either one of those can give you only the green scape and seed head. It could be had you a type that was the wrong daylength for our part of the country. With grocery store garlic, you never know. That's why a lot of people prefer to buy 'seed garlic' that is labeled, etc. If you plant grocery store garlic, try to find several different kinds...a white-skinned one, a purple-skinned one, etc. That sort of hedges your bets. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: How To Plant and Grow Garlic

ROTFL!!! Donka, all I can say is "Giddayup". I need to clean out the fridge, so I'm going to make soup base for the freezer with the turkey carcass, leeks, rutabega and carrots. I got some lasagna noodles, so I'm going to slice up some yellow squash that needs using, and the fennel bulbs I just got, and whatever peppers I have, and oven roast them, to layer with the ricotta. I have a little tzimmis left which I think I'll puree into the ricotta. I got some shallots, too. And I got some lamb shanks to braise with baby carrots and pearl onions and leftover sweetish red wine. And a chicken. It's a really big chicken. They tried to tell me it was a fryer, but it's 4.5 lbs.!! I think I'll roast it with the heels of my multigrain bread if it's not gone moldy, and an orange. I can try out the probe because I have no idea (other than the butcher's recommendation) how long to cook this big a not turkey. JRueter, I'm in Gelsonsland, so it has to be an amazing farmer's market to be really tempting. And yes, some of them are more about the social thing than cooking! The worst is being at a dinner party where the hosts are name dropping the truck farmers like they're best friends rather than customers. Needs, keep us posted!!! I'm keeping a good thought for Thursday!

Texas_Gem, great QOTW! Kudos for teaching your kids to cook, clean, do laundry, etc. My parents also did that with us and I did it with my two boys and girl. About a decade ago, I was in the market for a new tool kit and Sears had a basic one on a great sale. I ended up buying one for my son too, who was about 22, and added in some things it didn't have, such as a hammer, duct tape, picture hangers, etc. I sorta swelled with pride, when Joe told me about a year later that it was one of the best presents he'd ever gotten and that he used it on a very regular basis. OTOH, neither he nor my daughter ever mastered my clean as you go cooking technique. When I cook, by the time dinner is served, the counters are clean and cooking dishes at a minimum are rinsed and stacked neatly in the sink. When they cook, it looks like a category 5 hurricane has swept through the kitchen, lol! :-) Depending upon your definition of "cooking," I cook almost every day. It was just myself for the past few years, but now my daughter (age 30) lives with me. I do really enjoy cooking and puttering around in the kitchen, but it's hard to cook for one, and even two is not as ideal as cooking for a larger family. So I categorize a lot of what I do as "heating up" or "assembling" a meal. Breakfast is cold cereal, juice, and coffee most days, and something like eggs and hash browns and toast about once a week. Joy and I both work mostly from home. I'd say we heat up or assemble lunch 3-4 days a week--sandwiches or canned soup, a simple salad, maybe some tortilla chips and salsa. Another 2-3 days we eat breakfast really late and skip lunch, or we skip breakfast and do brunch. The other day or two we eat lunch out while running errands. We cook dinner, on average, six nights a week. Sorry Texas_Gem, but Hamburger and Tuna Helper do count as entrees, but only once a week. Mainly due to time and budget constraints we cook simple meals. Once a week or so we do something in the crock pot like chili, a chicken, soup, etc. We probably do tacos once a week. One or two meals are more elaborate, such as eggplant Parmesan, lasagne, spaghetti with either home cooked marinara or Alfredo sauce, babooti, etc. One to two nights are leftovers, and one day is either take out or a "lazy day," which means a frozen pizza or frozen dinners, lol. We steam veggies every day with dinner and rice when the entree isn't pasta. We make salads every day with dinner too. Fruit lives in the fruit bowl or fridge, and is our go-to for snacks. Now that I've bought the house, we are going to have a veggie garden! We're very excited about that! Although our cooking isn't gourmet, a well designed kitchen would be really, really helpful. It's not so much the design, as it follows the ice, water, rock, fire flow, it's simply the lack of counter space, because everything is packed in so tight in this small eat-in kitchen! I don't need a "chef's kitchen," just some basic, hard working appliances and a decent amount of prep space. Ample storage and pantry space would be icing on the cake! I think I've got it figured out, but it will be a couple of years before the kitchen remodel, so lots of time to change and learn! Great question! I enjoyed reading everyone's answers! Have a great day! :-)