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Roasted pepper Hummus

Creamy spicy and flavorful hummus.

Congratulations to Ram Narain for winning the giveaway. Please send me your mailing address : email@example.com, will have Wholesum Harvest mail you your chef knife. Thanks Mike from Wholesum Harvest, I really appreciate your generosity. Thanks to everyone who participated. Unfortunately we can only pick one winner. The winner was picked by Wholesum Harvest from a random drawing. A big thanks to Mike from Wholesum Harvest for the generous giveaway for TNS readers. A little while back I started a series on TNS ( read here ) called What’s on my plate? The purpose was to understand the foods we eat and where it comes from. There is no better way to find out then to reach out to a farmer. After the last post we got quite a few queries about growing organic produce. So this post will be all about organic farming. Over to Mike ….

Organic farming relies heavily on the natural breakdown of organic matter using techniques like composting to replace nutrients taken from the soil by previous crops. This biological process, driven by microorganisms, allows the natural production of nutrients in the soil throughout the growing season, and has been referred to as feeding the soil to feed the plant.
Organic farmers integrate biological and mechanical tactics to manage weeds without synthetic herbicides.  Other practices used to reduce weed pressure includes selection of competitive crop varieties, high-density planting, tight row spacing, and late planting into warm soil to encourage rapid crop germination. For pest control, organic growers encourage predatory beneficial insects to control pests.  They also plant companion crops and pest-repelling plants that discourage or divert pests.  In addition, they use insect traps to monitor and control insect populations.
A key characteristic of organic farming is the rejection of genetically engineered plants.  All USDA Certified Organic produce is grown from seeds that are not genetically modified.
Since 1990 the market for organic food and other products has grown rapidly, reaching $63 billion worldwide in 2012.  This demand has driven a similar increase in organically managed farmland which has grown over the years 2001-2011 at a rate of 8.9% per annum.  As of 2011, approximately 91,000,000 acres worldwide were farmed organically, representing approximately 0.9 percent of total world farmland, That was really insightful…makes one think. What are we really eating ? Sometime it worries me, not so much for myself but for the next generation. We grew up plucking fruits from  trees and playing outside in the hot sun. These kids know none of this. I remember when ‘finally teen’ was a toddler I would walk her to the park and she would be so excited to go and play, unfortunately there would be no one in the park. Most days, both of us would feel so lonely and we would come back with an unanswered question, “ where are the kids?” play dates was the only way to have her socialize with other kids. I don’t know if it is a Midwest thing or across the globe. In the pursuit of sophistication and betterment we have lost the essence of who we are. This is my 2 cents worth. Now over to some exciting news…. A Giveaway : Wholesum Harvest has generously decided to giveaway  a Porsche chef’s knife - all stainless steel. I won this last year in a photography challenge and love it. I use it everyday. It’s worth $200, so that’s really generous of them. It’s open to all bloggers and non-bloggers residing in the US. All you need to do is…

Like WH on Facebook and follow them on Pinterest.
Like TNS on Facebook or Twitter  and follow on Pinterest

Leave a comment that you did so and you are all set. You can leave multiple comments.  One winner will be selected by a random drawing by WH and announced here on May15th. Another sneak peek at the knife.

The Knife was sponsored by Wholesum Harvest - to one of the readers of TNS. This is a loooong post. But before  I sign off I have a recipe to share.

1cup garbanzo beans - soaked over night and cooked
1 red bell pepper (small)
4-5 garlic cloves
3 tbsp sesame roasted and powdered
1 tsp basil flakes
juice of a lime
1/4 cup good quality olive oil
1 tsp red chili flakes (optional)
crushed black pepper
additional olive oil for topping

Wash the bell pepper, and coat it in oil and over the gas range burn the skin, till it’s charred. You can grill it if you want. Let it cool, remove skin, deseed and cut into chunks. In a blender add the cooked garbanzo beans, chopped roasted pepper, oil, lime juice salt and all the other ingredients and blend on low speed. Do not make it smooth, leave it a little coarse. Serve with your favorite pita chips, veggies or tiny toasts.

For creating the bite size toast. I chopped strawberries and mixed with  finely chopped tarragon leaves and honey infused with cloves and zest of orange. Topped the  bite size toast with a helping of hummus and strawberries on the top. The astringent flavor of tarragon went so well with the sweet honey and strawberries. The hummus provided a little heat and it was a nicely balanced and flavorful bite:)
I cannot wrap by this post with out mentioning Dietlind Wolf, the first image in this post is inspired from her style. I love the graphic element she adds to her images. I doodle a bit as some of you know, the first image had a watercolor olive branch done by your’s truly, am in no way an artist but love to do something with a brush every once in a while.

Hope you guys have a wonderful weekend, don’t forget to participate :) Posted by Simi J at Friday, April 25, 2014 Labels: Appetizers n Salads, know your ingredient, Snacks

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