The Kitchen Whisperer

Hummus is to be creamy, decadent and just smooth like velvet. Find out the secret on how to make super creamy hummus at home on today’s Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer!

Hummus is one of those foods where I’m not really sure how to classify it. It’s a condiment, a dip, a spread, a main dish all rolled up in a beautiful bowl of creamy goodness. It’s savory, spicy, sweet and delicate. However, one thing it always is is super creamy. Now I’ve had store-bought and homemade that is not-so creamy. For the longest time I thought that was normal.

But it wasn’t until I visited this one Lebanese restaurant and ordered my first dish of Beef Shawarma. This dish was amazing (well minus the pickled veggies – not my thing) and it came with a dish of the most amazing hummus I’ve ever had in my life. This hummus was so incredibly creamy and light. It literally was smooth as butter.

We’d go there every week for months and every week I’d beg them to share their secret on how to make it. Finally the one day I took in a batch that I made and asked for their help. I shared how I made it and I guess they could see the determination in my eyes to want to learn. It was then they took me back to their kitchen and shared their secrets.

Once you learn this trick you’ll be making hummus weekly!

Get out of that same ol’ recipe rut and try one of these delicious and easy recipes this week! This week I highly recommend making the Hot Sausage, Peppers and Onions Subs and the Sriracha Honey Buttered Crispy Baked Oven Fried Wings!

Happy Sunday TKW Family! So tell me how your past week has been?  Take a vacation perhaps or maybe just chill out at home?  Talk with me, dish about your life. Let’s get to know one another. Last week for us was hard and sad. Sadly my sister in law (my brother in law’s wife) passed away after battling cancer for a little over 3 years. Death is hard for as it is for most but I guess for me, having experienced it at such a young age with my parents and having tragic events happen in my life, I don’t handle it well. But then I suppose no one really does.

It broke my heart to see my niece, her daughter, who is only 15 just stand there eyes so swollen from crying looking just so lost. I know that feeling all too well as I was her when I, too, first experienced the loss of a loved one. Though I was 18, I was still a child really. My poor, sweet brother in law…one of the gentlest souls you’ll ever meet standing there putting on a brave face though you could see his pain.

Death, in a way, kind of opens your eyes to many things. It kind of makes you aware of your life, the people in your life and realize what’s truly important. And also, it forces you to have those conversations that you really don’t want to ever have…how to handle your time when you pass, wills, finances; almost a preparation of what to do when someone passes.

Never go a day without letting someone you love know that they are loved

Using cookie scoops are one of the best tips I have to making uniform and even cookies. Whether you want bite size, regular or huge, cookie scoops are the way to go!

Looking at my Mom’s old cookie books and even her hand written cookie recipes, they all had the same thing ‘use 2 spoons to drop an even amount of cookie dough onto the pan‘. Okay let’s be real here for a minute…the cookies were never uniform in size, you often fought with the spoons getting the dough off and you ended up eating half of the cookie dough because you got frustrated with those stupid spoons.

When I was in college we would hang out in this one local diner with friends having some late night food to soak up the copious amounts of frat party booze we drank earlier that evening. Around 2am we’d see the bakers come in all bright-eyed, while we sat there glassy-eyed and we’d watch them get to work. You could smell the dough being made, hear the mixers running and smell chocolate in the air.

Eventually we went there so often we got to know the workers and, even back then, I’d ask a million questions about what they were making. I would always get a warm peanut butter cookie would just marvel at the trays of cookies, all uniformly shaped. For the longest time I thought they were pre-made by some store and they just thawed and baked them.

However that wasn’t the case, they made everything from scratch. Now while they wouldn’t give up any of their recipes they did let me back in the kitchen to sit and observe.
Cookie scoops are the way to go if you want to sell your cookies or have them present well

Get out of that same ol’ recipe rut and try one of these delicious and easy recipes this week! This week I highly recommend making the Tomato Caprese Focaccia Pizza and Pressure Cooker Boneless Thick-Cut Pork Chops with Oniony Mashed potatoes and Pork Gravy!!

Happy Sunday TKW Family! How’s this summer been treating you?  What’s the best thing you’ve done this summer thus far?  For me and this shoulder surgery my summer has been spent pretty much in a sling and in a recliner, however, I can’t complain too much as it really brought Mr. Fantabulous and me closer (if that’s even possible).

So I’m adult enough to admit it… I’m stubborn and extremely independent. Like my first day coming home from surgery, I was already starting with the “I can do it myself” spiel. To have someone wait on me and take care of me is tough as I simply don’t ask for things or even feel uncomfortable asking for help. It’s just not how I was raised. I was raised to be the one taking care of things, helping others, etc.

But this surgery, this surgery, it really humbled me and taught me it’s OK to ask for help (and ask for it multiple times). Mr. Fantabulous, God love him, has shown extreme patience with me. I’m a bad patient in the sense that I simply never liked being taken care of or more so ask for help. From putting my clothes on to washing my hair, from getting up every 3 hours to give me a pain pill to changing my ice packs every couple of hours Mr. Fantabulous never stopped and always, always did it with a smile.

How’s your summer been?

Even when the sun is blaring and it’s a bajillion degrees out you still have to feed the family. Today I’m sharing with you some of my favorite no cook/no bake recipes!

Now living in Pittsburgh the weather isn’t perfect. We get lots of rain, lots of gray days and lots of cold days. Gorgeous 75-80F degree days where there’s not a cloud in the sky are rare. When the sun is out it’s hot and HUMID. We’re talking high humidity. Like this girl doesn’t even bother trying to style her naturally curly hair when the humidity is about 40%. Why bother? You take one step out the door and you look like a poodle that just licked an electrical socket.

And since you’d rather be caught dead than to go out looking like that you stay inside where the AC is running, you can look like Medusa and no babies get scared by your hair. BUT… you have to eat. Sure you can resort to eating chips/cereal/ice cream (which all are perfectly OK in my book) but it gets old.

Turning on the oven is the last thing you want to do and grilling is out of the question with high humidity/high heat. So today I’m showing you how you can have delicious meals without turning on the stove or even the toaster oven!

Stay cool with a full belly!