Chipotle Hummus

This was inspired by a hummus plate I had the other day in the city.  There were three types of hummus, and the chipotle hummus was the best by far.  It's been on my mind ever since and I've been wanting to recreate it.  I have to say, I think mine is better than the original.

(Somewhat) standard ingredients - chick peas, garlic, olive oil, fresh lemon juice and lemon zest, salt and pepper.  Really good hummus calls for a dollop of tahini...but this is Poor Man's Cupboard and tahini is expensive.  To get a similar nutty tone, I use leftover slivered almonds from last Christmas' biscotti marathon that have been hanging out in the cabinet.  Totes legit.

Also, shelling the chick peas is essential for making a really creamy hummus.  It's time consuming, but I pop them out of the shell and right into the food processor.  Feel free to deposit the husks onto any Chinese food container lid you've been hoarding (can't beat free tupperware).

So for this recipe, I just got a can of chipotle peppers and popped them in.  I probably used about half the can, or 4 peppers.  I also poured in maybe a tablespoon or so of the chipotle sauce.  I wish I had some cilantro in my garden, but instead I pulled a couple sprigs of parsley, and got to mixing.

Look at that color!  The one I had in the city wasn't as vibrant.  It's so good, too - it's got quite a kick.  And look - A&P was out of pitas, but they were selling this bag of "crutons" for $1.54...perfect for hummus scooping!  My afternoon just got a whole lot brighter.  :D

My Big Fat Garden Update

 

It's been about a month now since I first "planted" my garden.  I can't believe how fast that went!  There's been some really cool progress, and also some learning curves.  Let's dig in and break it down, shall we?

1.  Goliath Tomatoes

That picture above is like my pride and joy of this project.  That little guy popped up about 5 days ago and he just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  You can see below that there are some more flowers, so I'm hoping for a decent crop.

2. Cherry Tomatoes

No fruit as of yet, but there is definitely some flowering going on.  It started off as sort of a runt of a plant, so I'm glad it's making progress.

3. Parsley, Thyme, Basil

  

These guys are doing great!  The other day I made a little pesto with the basil for a lunchtime pasta, and made thyme chicken and parsley salad for dinner.  So good!

4. Radishes

These are by far my biggest disappointments.  These are the original starter plants my mom got me -- they haven't really gotten any bigger.  But then all of a sudden, literally in a 24-hour period, this one radish stalk grew like 5 inches and made a pretty little purple flower on top!  It's the craziest thing.  I think I'll keep it and see what happens next.

I planted some radishes from seeds and they were looking really great -- until I put them outside and fried them in the heat.  I need to start a new batch from seeds, but I've just been a little busy (and lazy).   I'll probably tackle that today.

5. Strawberries

Also a little disappointing.  I planted 10 strawberry plants in this container, and only 3 of them are growing.  I'm not really sure what to do with this -- if I should just let it be, or dig up the the ones that aren't growing and replant the good ones farther apart from each other.  I'm going to do a little research on this.

What's promising is that one of the good plants has begun to flower.  Still has a long way to go, but I knew that this was going to be a late-harvester so I'll continue being patient.

6. Snow Peas

These guys have been the most work.  I've continued building the lattices up, and every morning I inspect the plants to make sure the tendrils are latching onto the lattice and not onto each other (I've had to do a little tender untangling).  When the heatwave hit last week, I had to bring the plants inside.  They were getting dried out and yellowing up quite a bit at the bottom.  And with all the rain, I've kept them inside because they seem so fragile.  Today is their first day back outdoors.

Even with just the indoor sunlight, the snow peas have been doing really well!  They've been flowering, and we've even got some pods.  I 'snapped' one off this morning and tried it -- super crunchy and sweet, perfection!

So that about wraps up the update.  I'm going to do some research now about the strawberries, and later I'll sow another batch of radish seeds.  Will post again soon! 

We've got tendrils!!

Progress!

I was away this weekend, celebrating GWU's graduation commencement (headlined by the most perfect everything, Kerry Washington -- check out her commencement speech on YouTube).  I left Friday morning, and didn't get home until way late last night.  Before I left, I was nervous about how the plants might fare without monitoring or watering -- I've noticed that outside in the sun, in the cat litter planters, my garden plants get dry pretty quickly.  So in order to minimize any damage my absence might cause, I brought the plants indoors and watered them the morning I left (also, to minimize any damage that Mickey might cause, I sett the plants up as high as I could...Mick loves his greens).

 

I got home late last night, and was so tired that I didn't really do any garden diagnostics.  Instead, I made sure Mickey hadn't somehow knocked them over and then went to bed.  This morning I did a thorough check, and found the snow peas have started to latch onto the homemade trellis!  Woot, exciting!!  A little shot of confidence that things are going alright.  And it's sort of amazing how quickly, almost overnight, that happened.  Small miracles of the universe, life happening.

Next I need to do a little research about pruning.  I've noticed some of the leaves at the bottom of the snow pea plants are yellowing.  I'm assuming those leaves aren't useful anyway, and that they might be drawing water away from the top of the plant.  I'll look into that and report my findings.

Anyway, good start for the week.  Happy Monday everyone!

Poor Man's Garden

Woot!  Spring is here!!!  YASSSS!!!   Been ready for quite some time now for shorts, flip flops, and outdoor happy hours.  And also a little gardening.

My mom always had a garden when I was growing up, and there's nothing quite as satisfying as going to the backyard to grab some fresh ingredients for dinner.  I've been wanting to tend a garden of my own for years now -- my work friends in Skillman know one of my dreams is to have my own hundred acre farm someday -- but my residences as of late have not been conducive for crops.  This spring I am taking matters into my own hands and creating a fire escape garden.  And before you get concerned, I've left plenty of room for egress should an actual fire occur:

I'm excited for this, something to keep me busy during the summer.  I hope I'm not being overly ambitious, but I've planted a bunch of stuff.

                            Top row: Heirloom tomatoes, parsley, thyme, basil, cherry tomatoes
                            Bottom row: Snow peas (3 containers) & radishes

I also have another container, not in the picture, that I planted strawberries in.  Those are going to be late harvesters, but hopefully worth the wait.

 And this is very tried and true Poor Man's Cupboard project.  Those containers are empty cat litter jugs (that were collecting in the apartment because I was too lazy to bring them downstairs to the recycle bin).  I just cut the tops off and filled them with organic potting soil.  So essentially the pots were free, and I spent about $20 altogether on the plants and the soil at Home Depot (shout out to Mom for the snow peas and the radishes, I got those from her).  Not bad!

I went to a couple stores to find trellises for the snow peas.  But the cheapest ones I could find were $7.99 each, and weren't that tall.  I knew that I could do better (read: cheaper) on my own, so I went back to home depot for some dowels and twine.

Once I devised a system and got the first one done, the second two took no time at all.  Dowels were $.89 each, and the twine was another $3.  Awesome!

Aside from the tomatoes (I love tomatoes, I will eat them like apples), I'm really excited about the radishes.  The ones in the containers are starter plants, but I'm also growing some from seeds.  They only take 22 days to harvest from seeds, so I planted some seeds in an egg carton that I will transfer to the pots once the potted once are ready for harvest.  Then I can sow new seeds, and keep alternating for the rest of the summer.

I actually already harvested some of the starter radishes.  They were popping up out of the soil, and I wanted to make some room for the smaller ones.

So good!  This is a really exciting project, and I hope to be blogging about it all summer.  And I hope you stay tuned to read all about it!

Proof that garment bags are a waste of money

This is soooo Poorman, I couldn't not post it.  This beats wearing my suit jacket on the plane...

From "EEEK!" to Chic - The Poorman's actual cupboard

I wanted to get a lot done this weekend, seeing as the apartment is littered with boxes. Unfortunately I had some other errands to run, so I didn't get to everything on the list. One thing that needed to get done was the kitchen...it's been a nightmare. Flashback to a convo with the boyfriend over the phone this weekend while I was at work:

"Hey, where are your bowls."
"Um, they're either in a box in the kitchen, or a box in the den, or a box in my car. But there are definitely glasses in a box somewhere that you can use as a makeshift bowl."

It's been a busy week.

Aside from not having much time, I also don't have much counter space. In like, I don't have any. All I have is this built-in cupboard that needed some cleaning and touching up. So I tackled that this weekend, and tried to find a place for everything.

Despite being a Poorman, I do have some hang ups. Until I have my own house with my own cabinets, I don't like putting plates down on unlined shelves. I didn't buy new liners and I really didn't feel like going to the store, so I made one out of an old white pillow case I'm not using anymore. I cut both sides in order to make it twice as long, measured it, cut it to size and ironed it. Glad to have repurposed it, because it would have otherwise ended up in the trash. And, I bet it's a lot greener than actual shelf liners. And free.

Here are some before and after shots. I got some really cool Phillips Tablets glass bottles from my mom and grandma that I put on the top shelf, along with some cool tins i got from my grandpa with Delft patterns on them. Love! I may not have gotten as much done as I wanted, but I'm def happy with the results!

From "EEEK!" to Chic - Belated update

Sorry to be gone for so long, it's been a busy few weeks.  I moved most of my stuff over the weekend, and last night I got the last bit of stuff out of the old apartment.  One thing about the new apartment -- there is a lot less closet space than the old apartment, so currently I have a bunch of boxes sitting in one room (Room #3 if you've been paying attention).  Also, shout out to Lynn, my mom, my sister and her boyfriend -- they were amazing helpers helping me move all the heavy stuff over the weekend.

The new apartment is coming together.  The floors are all painted now, although they need a few touch-ups.  The walls are mostly painted- still need to do second coats on the gray walls.  I painted the kitchen all-white, thinking that a nice, bright, white kitchen would look really clean and classic.  I'm not terribly happy with the result, it sort of just looks primed.  I'm thinking of either breaking it up with an accent wall, or maybe once everything is put away and hung up on the walls it will look much better.

You can see above that the living room is mostly done.  I found some old prints of Hoboken from the early 1900s that I think will look really good hung up in there.  I also need to paint those ceiling tiles -- I think a nice crisp white will really help to brighten up the room (my mom still thinks the walls are too dark, and I agree the room doesn't get much light...but I think a bright white ceiling will clear that up).  And I still need some curtains for the windows.  At first I was thinking white, again...but after seeing some things on Apartment Therapy, and after watching the first season of Downtown Abbey, I think I want to go with a tea-stain yellow.  There's something old school and almost Parisian about that that I like....we'll see.  I'm always up for suggestions!

So I'm obsessed with my new iPhone, but I feel like you're only as cool as as many apps you have downloaded.  I downloaded Pic Stitch, and put together the following progress-collage.  As I finish each room, I'm going to continue putting together progress shots like this.  Stay tuned!

One last thing - I am obsessed with Craigslist.  I cruise the ads almost every day looking for some good finds.  I start off with the Free section, and check off "has image" and do a search.  I've seen some really cool things, but you have to act fast because that stuff goes quick.  Then I'll do a Furniture search, with a max amount of $100 and again "has image."  With that, I was able to find the two pieces below - the server buffet was $20, and the tobacco stand was $25!  Amazeballs.  I'll also check the Antiques section, again with the $100 limit and "has image."  I've seen some cool stuff there too.

Also, this is a bit more local, but if you are near Princeton you should definitely check out Skillman Furniture Store (www.skillmanfurniture.com).  It's a second-hand store, and they have some pretty awesome stuff.  I got this step table there for $25.

That's about all I have for now.  The apartment is a bit of a mess, and I'm a bit of a mess myself.  I'm exhausted from moving and traveling, and getting use to all the noise at night again.  I might get some stuff done this weekend, and next weekend I think I want to tackle replacing the vanity in the bathroom.  Exciting stuff!

Happy New Year!!