Eating Fresh Yumminess on a Budget

Good food doesn't have to be expensive and overpriced.  One of our favorite side dishes is hummus with veggies.  If you buy hummus at the store, it is sure to several dollars for a tiny portion.  Aaron loves hummus and could probably eat the whole container on the end of one carrot stick.  And if he doesn't eat all, then I'll be sure and finish it off for him.  In order to allow us the privilege of getting to consume hummus as much as we want, I make our own.  At first, I was cautious: I followed recipes.  Now I just do my own thang.  It is a very forgiving food.  Here is the basic recipe:

1 15oz can of garbanzo beans/chickpeas, juice reserved
1 1/2 T of tahini
2 T lemon juice
1 large clove of garlic
1/2 t salt

Put it all in a food processor and process.  You will probably need to add some of the reserved juice from the beans in order to get the right consistency.

Follow that recipe once or twice and once you get the hang of it, just toss it.  Who needs measurements anyways?  I certainly don't.  We had plans to eat lunch with one of Aaron's cousins, but due to illness, we wound up at home with no food.  So I whipped up a version of alfredo, pulled some pesto out of of the freezer, dumped in some tomatoes and olives, used the sauce to drench some rotini and ta-da: dinner is served! No measuring cups were used in the making of this food.  Of course, my propensity to not measure things means that our food tastes different every time I make.  Sometimes this is for the better and sometimes for the worse.  Variety is the spice of life.
Anyhow, back to the hummus.  It is very versatile.  Just throw in an avocado or a sweet potato.  Or how about some olives? When we had sweet potato hummus it was so sweet that I almost wanted to dip my fruit in it.  The only thing that stopped me was the garlic.  Next time I will skip the garlic and try it on some apple slices.  I know, I'm strange.
If you want to make it even cheaper, just by some dried out beans and re-hydrate them.  You have to think ahead but it is much cheaper.
Warning! Scary ingredient ahead! Don't worry about the tahini.  Tahini is just sesame seed paste.  It seems a little on the expensive side at about $6 a can at Wal-Mart, but don't worry, it lasts for about 20 batches of hummus.  I've never actually taken the time to figure out how much each batch of hummus costs but I would estimate that it only comes to about $1 per batch.