Chocolate and Beyond

My roasted garlic & carrot hummous recipe (tasty & vegan too!)

I made this recipe up at the weekend, when I did an afternoon tea, and it turned out to be delicious. I thought I'd share it with you (sorry I can't be more precise over the ingredients, I wasn't intending on writing about it when I first started making it!).

Andrea's Roasted Garlic & Carrot Hummous

6-7 large carrots

3-4 large cloves garlic

Approx 800g (2 cans) chick peas (mine were previously cooked from dried)

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 teaspoon smoked paprika powder

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

4-5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Zest & juice of half a lemon

Heaped tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley

Salt & pepper to taste

Some vegetable stock to 'wet' while blending

1. Chop and roast the carrots (with a drizzle of olive oil) for about 40 minutes at 190 degrees celcius then add roughly chopped garlic and cook for about another 20 minutes until the carrots are golden brown and soft.

2. Allows to cool, then blend the roasted carrots and garlic with the chick peas, spices, oilve oil, lemon juice and seasoning in an electric blender. Keep blending and stirring down, slowly adding the vegetable stock until you get the consistency that you prefer for your dip!

3. Allow to cool in the fridge and serve with pitta bread or crudités as a dip or a starter, with a sprig of parsley in the top to garnish.

There you go - easy as pie! If you end up making this, I'd be interested to know what you think (my disclaimer though is to remember that my ingredients are approximate - try the taste test as you go along to see what it's turning out like!).

 

What do you mean when you say you're eating 'healthily'?

When you talk about 'healthy eating' do you actually mean you're 'dieting', or at least switching to low-fat eating? It's become a bit of a bug bear of mine that people use the term 'healthy eating' as a euphemism for eating a low-fat diet, when there is so much evidence to show that eating the standard 'low fat diet' isn't healthy at all.

When I say I'm eating 'healthily', I mean that I'm being mindful about including nutritional foods in my diet again, when maybe I've been a bit slack for a while (such as the times I've been travelling and living off pizza!). My healthy foods include things like nuts, seeds and avocados - which are some of the most nutritionally dense foods you can eat, and are ones which dieters tend to avoid.

Also for me, a healthy diet tends to mean eating less white carbs, which don't make me feel great (though I did eat 2 slices of buttered white toast for breakfast this morning!), but I don't start using less fat, and I certainly don't start eating 'diet' foods. Again, there is so much evidence to show these do us more harm than good, and also make us hungrier in the long run because they contain so many substitute ingredients.

Of course, I do include a lot of vegetables and salads when I'm eating 'healthily' - but that's because they are the foundation of a good diet, not because they help me lose weight.

I know I'm no skinny minny, but I do now stay at a stable weight, pretty much whatever the occasion. And I am a lot happier than I used to be, when I was spending what seemed to be every waking moment thinking about how to keep the number on the scales down. For me, the way I now eat 'healthily' actually feels healthy.