I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Sometimes, in the middle of Lent, your spirit cries out for something soft, warm, comforting and, well, Mediterranean. Hummus - nutty, creamy, sharpened with lemon juice - is just the ticket. With peppers on the side, it makes a fine meal.

Hummus

• 1 lb dried chickpeas
• lots of water
• 1 cup sesame seeds or tahini
• 8-10 Tbl olive oil
• 3-5 Tbl lemon juice
• 1-2 Tbl salt

Next, consider your sesame options. If you have tahini, by all means use it. That's the canonical ingredient anyway. If, however, you have a bunch of sesame seeds burning a hole in your pocket, you can make your own tahini substitute. I did have a warm pocket full of sesame seeds, so to speak, and did the following: heat a skillet to medium high and then add the sesame seeds. Toast until they begin to brown and start to smell lovely. Remove from the heat and dump into a food processor with a tablespoon or so of your olive oil and blitz thoroughly. You may not get a paste at this point, but that's ok, because you'll be doing more processing shortly.

Pull your chickpeas out of the cooking water, I use a slotted spoon, since a little residual water is no bad thing. Start to run them through the food processor in batches (unless your food processor is enormous). If you are working with your own toasted sesame seeds, start by adding some chickpeas to the bowl with the seeds to help get the seeds well-ground. If you are using tahini (and usually I do) add it to the chickpeas as you process them, spreading the total amount out over your batches to get a more even mix. As you blitz away, add another five or six tablespoons of olive oil, a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, and perhaps a tablespoon of salt, again spreading it out over your batches. Process in short bursts for a short time if you like a chunky texture, for a longer time if you prefer smooth.

As you finish each batch, dump it into a mixing bowl. When you've finished all your batches, give it a taste and see if it needs more olive oil, lemon or salt. Bear in mind that olive oil will not only add flavor, but will also smooth out the texture. Stir well, especially if you've added more of anything.

During the blitzing of the peas, you can add other spices and flavorings if you like. Garlic is good (if you like garlic), and the only reason I didn't use it was because I had run out the day before.

When serving, I like to smooth a little dent in the top of the hummus and drizzle in a bit more good quality olive oil.

Pita Bread

Whenever I want to try a new type of bread, my go-to source is Beard On Bread. The book is a little old, but still a great resource. I used his pita bread recipe and it turned out well, although it didn't puff and split as pita should. My suspicion is that my oven doesn't heat the way Beard thinks it should; a hot oven (500F) will heat very differently if it is gas or electric. The bread was good, though.