We woke up yesterday morning to the first real snowfall of the season. We had a light sprinkling last week but it wasn't even enough to sweep up. Yesterday's snowfall required finding the snow shovel in our garden shed.
I always love the look of the garden during that first snowfall. Fortunately just last week we had our gardener here to trim up the cedar hedge and the boxwoods, just in time for winter to really arrive.
I can't believe how high our cedar hedge has grown, look at it towering over Rebecca! The photo below shows a glimpse of the beautiful stone house next door, this is where Anna26 lived at one time! Wish you still lived next door, Anna.
I don't really decorate the garden for Christmas with the exception of some greenery and holly in my favourite glazed clay pot, seen below.
My kitchen has been a busy one this week, churning out lunches and dinners and a dish for last night's Fun Bookclub potluck (I brought a roasted cauliflower dish).
At the beginning of the week I cooked up a big batch of dried chickpeas as the base for some meals.
One thing about eating plant-based- it requires eating lots of beans! I am somehow averse to constantly buying beans in cans but I think in order to go to the trouble of boiling beans one needs to do a large batch, it's quite time-consuming after all.
I wanted to make some hummus for snacks and sandwiches, and while I basically use Jamie Oliver's
recipe one thing I do different to Jamie is that I peel the chickpeas:
This was a tip from another hummus recipe I read somewhere, and while it is a bit fiddly to peel the chickpeas it does make a huge difference to the texture of the hummus.
The other difference is that I add a bit of nutritional yeast, for flavour and the B vitamins it contains.
And of course Herbamare salt which I'm a bit addicted to!
I wanted a thicker hummus that wouldn't drip out of a sandwich, you can see the texture I was going for below:
While I was making the hummus I roasted a few cherry tomatoes.
This is a delicious sandwich: hummus spread on both sides of a bun, topped with arugula and roasted tomatoes.
A perfect lunch!
I have a fairly busy day today: a long walk with Scout, a meeting at the accountant's office, a restorative yoga class with Laura (done in a hammock-type thing, I'll be falling down for sure), grocery shopping, and a promise to Lil Rascal to cook some latkes for dinner tonight.
Hope your Wednesday is busy and happy,
xoxDani
