To Beet or not to Beet....that is the question!

I found myself perusing the aisles of my neighborhood Whole Foods today, which for your information is not a rare occurrence at all. In fact, my best friend and I have this joke, where everytime I ask her "Guess where I ammmmm....." she automatically replies "Oh gosh, Whole Foods," and this conversation occurs via telephone at least once every 2 days.

Anyways, I found myself holding: A bag of beet chips, and tub of hummus. I love these two foods but I DON'T love spending more money than I should. What I mean is that I am perfectly capable of making hummus and beet chips on my own, for much less money, so I thought why not!

So, for a fraction of the price I purchased a can of Eden Organic's Garbanzo Beans 

**Health Tip: BPA Free Cans**

BPA stands for Bisphenol A, and is a known carcinogen that is in the lining of most canned product. Eden Organics is the only brand I know of that uses BPA FREE can lining, so I always opt for Eden when given the option. 

I also purchased a couple of beets to make my own beet chips.

Beet Chips: 

(more pictures at end of post)

Ingredients & special tools:

- 2 large, raw beets

- mandolin/vegetable slicer

- good knife

Directions:

1) Pre-heat oven to 375

2) Peel skin off of raw beets with a knife

3) Set your mandolin to 1/8 inch thick setting, and slice up them beets! (Be careful, I often get carried away when using my mandolin and end up slicing my finger.....so unless you want to be my bandaged fingers twin, be careful)

4) Line some baking sheets with parchment paper and lay out beets in one layer on the sheets. 

5) Sprinkle with salt and place in the oven. Bake for 23-30 minutes or until slightly browned. Keep on eye on them, they progress from perfectly cooked to burnt in a matter of minutes!

6) Remove chips to cooling rack and let cool.

Garlicky Hummus

Ingredients & special tools:

- can of garbanzo beans

- 2-3 large cloves of garlic

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp cumin

- juice of one medium lemon

- 1 tbs tahini (optional)

- immersion blender (food processor also works, but I just chose to use my immersion blender)

Directions:

1) Dump liquid from can of beans, then empty beans into immersion blender safe container.

2) Peel 2-3 cloves of garlic and add to beans.

3) Add in all other ingredients & blend until smooth. It is a good idea to stop blending every once in awhile, and mix the hummus with a spoon to make sure that there are no lingering garlic chunks.

Beets, halfway through being peeled.

All sliced up and ready to go!

 Beet chips and hummus...about to be eaten.

These chips and hummus were easy to make, and tasted as good, if not better than the store bough version. Moral of the story, home made is always better.......as long as you're willing to suck it up and put in the effort to make it work ;)