Humus - houmous

Q. Was I a bit smug about reseeding our poly-tunnel desert?
A. I was. see thin fuzz of green five weeks ago.

A week ago, I gave the new micro-meadow its first haircut because some of the tillers were a foot tall [see R]. Apart from a liberal few handfuls of saved grass-seed, all it took was regular water. Of course, because this ground was grassland+forbs 15 years ago, just adding water would have been enough to get the area greened over . . . eventually. But I really wanted mainly grass because it is year round and the roots will stabilize the dirt and retain water.

Nevertheless there were / are a few baldie patches [within O R]. Not sure why; it may have been due to some builder's lime spread about to kill the coliforms from the last time we had resident indoor sheep. Or it could have just been missed patches when I was broadcasting the seed; or high patches where the seed was washed off by the hose-pipe. Whatevs. What I did was dig out a few scoops of really wormy humus from the compost heaps and spread that into the bald patches. We shall see if it makes any difference; can't do any harm anyway, worms are A Good Thing.

In the weekend shop on Friday a small tub of reduced at sell-by houmous bi tahini was thrown into the basket and we dug in at Saturday lunchtime. It was 'okay': too much lemon, not enough garlic, or salt. It comes out of a factory called The Galway Kitchen. Our pot was "organic": Cooked Chickpeas (56%), Water, Organic Tahini Paste (11%) (Crushed Sesame Seeds), Organic Sunflower Oil, Organic Lemon Concentrate (3.3%), Organic Garlic (1.6%), Salt. Which is essentially the same as The Original except that they couldn't source organic rapeseed oil, so used ?Ukrainian? sunflowers instead. As with a lot of commercial products, there's a lot of [b/c free] water in there but everyone uses some water in the mix of this tasty paste.

The Beloved's grandfather was a Lebanese Maronite and one of the simple pleasures of the last 50 years has been witnessing his daughters having robust discussion about the ratios of garlic, lemon and salt in the houmous. They would all have been shocked, shocked I say, that sunflower oil was considered a valid substitute for olive oil. Whatever about the details, we could be sure that, for any family gathering someone would contribute a bowl, big enough for bathing a toddler, full of houmous.