Vegan MoFo Day 1: Hummus!

It's heeeere! It's heeeeeeere! Vegan MoFo is here at last!

As promised, I'll be celebrating this year's MoFo with a paean to that most wonderful of food forms, the dip. Who doesn't love dipping? Sitting around a table with a big bowl of something yummy and plenty of interesting things to poke into it... perfect. I love the informality and friendliness of a dip-dinner. For some reason, it always seems to lend itself to conversation and long lingering spells at the table, and I love that.

I'm kicking things off with a simple dip that pretty much every vegan everywhere likes (and if you're the vegan who doesn't, SORRY!): HUMMUS! Here's tonight's batch:

 

 The garnish is olive oil, za'atar and bittersweet paprika, and yes, it is a nod to Sabra. I feel churlish for admitting it, but I adore Sabra hummus and if it wasn't so expensive compared to homemade hummus, I would probably never make my own. THERE. I said it.

With that off my chest, may I just say that this is actually a really fine batch of hummus. I like to use the recipe in Veganomicon with some tweaks of my own (more water, more lemon juice, slightly less oil, chop the garlic with the blender before you put in the chickpeas, etc) because it really never disappoints. Even after all these years, we're still together, this hummus recipe and I.

*cough*

Anyway, I can't blog about dips without blogging about the accompanying dippers! Here's a (blurry, sorry) shot of our full table for tonight:

 

We've got rainbow carrots, cucumber, and celery in the white dish, then some (canned) dolmas in the black dish in back, and of course a big plate of whole wheat pita in the middle. But what is that other dip you see?! Oh, I guess you'll have to tune in tomorrow to find out... On Tuesdays I'm out of the house for 10 hours at a stretch so this week I'll be double dipping, as it were. (Har har.)

Last but not least, look who is here! Here is the Emperor this morning when I was refreshing him on the whole idea of vegan MoFo:  

Looks skeptical, no?

 And here's the Magician after one celery stick too many. Buddy, we've all been there...

 

 Tomorrow I hope to sneak in a few minutes to read other people's blogs and start commenting! I can't wait to see what everyone else is doing for MoFo!