Minty Pea and Butter Bean Hummus

Every year a girlfriend orders the Christmas with Southern Living book and we thumb through it at work looking for crafty ideas to work on for the holidays. In the past we have made adorable metal buckets filled with dog biscuits, toys and other treats for our dog lover friends. We made an advent calendar using small gift bags, fabric and scrap-booking supplies for her sister – a sea shell Christmas tree for another friend that loves the beach and we’ve even tried some of the recipes for parties.

The craft projects in the 2010 book were not all that interesting, but a few of the recipes caught my eye. I decided to try one from the appetizer section – Minty Pea and Butter Bean Hummus.

The Ingredients:

2 Cups Frozen Petite Peas – Thawed
2 Cups Frozen Baby Lima Beans – Thawed
3 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 Large Garlic Cloves
1/2 Cup Fresh Mint Leaves (I would use about 1/2 the amount next time)
1/2 Cup Crumbled Feta Cheese (I would use less next time)
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Teaspoon Ground Pepper (I used a lot more than that)
Whole Wheat Pita Bread

I added everything except the pita bread to the blender. I didn’t feel like digging out the big food processor and that thought process turned out to be a horrible idea. My blender is not an awesome Vita-Mix blender and it just didn’t have enough oomph to blend the ingredients. After getting a rubber spatula stuck to one of the blades, I fumbled through the cabinet to find all of the parts to my big Cuisinart and wished at that very moment that I hadn’t given my smaller one to Dan’s friend.

A few weeks back I had found the top to what I thought was the smaller one… couldn’t figure out if it was an extra one that I didn’t give away, it confused me.  I grabbed the box of Cuisinart blades and there was a mini blade inside that fit the smaller unit I had found last week. Huh? I grabbed for the smaller top piece and saw Osterizer etched into the plastic.  No way! My craptastic blender came with an attachment that I never knew it had. Sweet! I was like a kid at Christmas. (Yes that is two Christmas references in the same post and it’s not even July). I gave my new-found treasure a good rinse and loaded my hummus mixture into it and let it whirl!

I got everything mixed up into a creamy texture. There will be some lumps due to the feta.

I then cut the whole wheat pita bread into triangles and used an olive oil and garlic spray on them.  I also added sea salt before putting them under the broiler to crisp up.

They only took a few minutes. I like making my pita chips instead of buying them – Not that I won’t eat an entire bowl of Stacy’s Pita Chips at a party – I just prefer eating hummus with homemade chips or pretzels.

The feta and mint combo was a little overpowering at first – that is why I would dial those two ingredients back a bit for next time. If you don’t like feta, you won’t like this hummus – I bet it would even taste good without it. I happen to like feta, so it didn’t bother me – now if I LOVED feta, I would keep the measurement at 1/2 cup – I just wanted to taste the peas and beans more.

It was a nice change from my normal Trader Joe’s Kalamata Olive Hummus and a perfect afternoon snack. BTW – According to the Internet, we are only 179 days away from Christmas, hah! hah!