Banana Walnut Pancakey Goodness

This is a simple home-made pancake recipe modified with some tasty things I had in the house...

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 or 2 bananas, mashed
  
• two handfuls of chopped walnuts
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
  

Directions

1. In a large bowl, put all dry ingredients and the banana together. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter (I've substituted olive oil for this recipe and it works great); mix until smooth.
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

Hummus you will kill for...literally

Alright, so we're all feeling the sharp sting of the recession, but hey, let's look at the bright side, ok?...OK!?

Great. So this is a time when a plethora of opportunities to start anew arise. For example, you can:

1. Intern at a non-profit until you decide what to do with your life (CAI internships available here)!
2. Travel to Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe or many other 3rd world countries to "find yourself" by doing "development" projects. Those stupid underdeveloped people will gladly help find you...
3. Go back to grad school and get that masters in social anthropology with a focus on gender studies concentrating on ecological imperialism so that you can emerge two years later with a greater understanding of the problems you already knew about!
4. Cook things for yourself by buying (shudder) ingredients and (shiver) putting them together into a (gasp) recipe.

Here's an excellent hummus recipe for those of you who wish to avoid throwing away thousands of dollars at Trader Joe's for their expensive (though delicious) hummus.

You'll need:

A food processor (or strong forearms)
2 tbsp tahini (it's like peanut butter except with sesame seeds. Look it up)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves mashed/chopped garlic
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 8 oz. can garbanzo beans
Sprinkle of paprika or parsley as a garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Cool. This is possibly the easiest recipe of all time.

Put everything except for the garbanzo beans into the food processor. Open the can of garbanzo beans and empty all but 1/4 of that yummy bean juice. Now dump the beans and remaining juice into the food processor. Process, and voila! Hummus!

Note: the consistency of the hummus is going to depend on the combination of oil, tahini, and water, so for a thick hummus, add more oil and tahini, and for a thinner hummus, add more bean juice.

As for the garnish, some experiments we've done to spice this recipe up are:

1. Adding cumin and honey for a sweet and spicy hummus
2. Adding tomato paste and/or sundried tomato spread
3. Adding rando herbage like Italian Herbs, basil, parsley, or rosemary

All are tasty. Enjoy the hummus and that delicious sense of accomplishment!