Hummus at home - no food processor

My New Years resolution this year was to start making my own hummus. It has become a such a staple in my diet as a healthy and hearty snack that I go through one of those small tubs within about a week. So I bought me a bag of garbanzos, armed myself with some tahini and went to work.

I had made beans before, so I was at least familiar with the idea of overnight soaking to soften up the casing. This worked wonderfully and more than doubled the size of my beans. Then came the matter at issue, how do you mush up garbanzo beans without a food processor? I think I probably foresaw this issue, but in these difficult economic times, I decided I should make due with what I had instead of heading to Target to buy a new food processor.

In comes the egg beater from 1954, I swear I saw this thing on Magic Kingdom's Carousel of Progress next to the butt shaking rubber band exercise machine.

So I start to get medieval on my beans with this thing, slam it into high gear and even hit the little turbo booster switch near the trigger.

It takes about a half an hour, and finally I get a decent looking paste. I could have invented my own food processor with the time and concentration it takes to run this thing.

So tonight I am making jambalaya (just a side note, relatively unimportant) and I have also conveniently run out of hummus. I did find some zen peace with my beater and I got a decent hummus out of it, but the effort was still outrageously disproportionate with the end result. So I pull my beans out of the freezer in their little baggie, since I realized the bean boiling thing could be done en masse and I could freeze the beans to stagger my hummus creations. I let the bag defrost in some warm water, and about half a third of the way through defrosting I start playing with the beans in the sealed up bag. I put two fingers around the bag where a bean was and just...squished it. plop.

Ah-ha! a little advantage I had over the beans, they were sealed in this little ziploc bag. I started squishing all of them with my fingers, and my palm, and just rolling the bag around in my hands. Kind of lake playing with play-doh, but only then you get to eat it...wait a second, were you one of those kids too?

Anyway, to make some hummus when you don't have a food processor, stick your post-boiled beans in a ziploc bag (hopefully not while steaming hot) and just squish with your hands. It makes up for time savings with squishy hand fun.