“Think peanut butter, only made with sesame seeds.”  OChef.com

How familiar are you with tahini?

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.  (Isaiah 61:11; NIV)

Staying with our salad dressing recipes for the month, today’s recipe is a rather atypical dressing made with tahini.  Perhaps you’re familiar with tahini if you’ve eaten hummus. Tahini, or sometimes known as sesame paste, is made from ground sesame seeds.  Sesame seeds are soaked in water for a day, then crushed to separate the bran from the kernels. The crushed seeds are then put into salted water, where the bran sinks, but the kernels float and are skimmed off the surface. They are toasted, then ground to produce the paste.

Tahini is usually associated with the Middle East, where it is eaten as is.  It’s also used in making hummus.  I talked about hummus in the Daily Gram of October 23, 2007.  Hummus is a dip or spread made with chick peas, lemon juice, garlic, and tahini.  Baba ghanoush, (a dish made with eggplant) and halvah (a confection using honey) are also a couple of foods that use tahini.

Tahini is easily found now in the health food sections of the supermarket along with other nuts butters such as almond butter and organic peanut butter.  It comes in a glass jar much like a peanut butter jar.  It is light tan in color and is thinner in consistency than peanut butter although it is spreadable.  When you open the jar, you’ll discover that the oil has separated and risen to the top. Stir it before using, (similar to mixing paint in a can) to even out the consistency. Once opened it is best to refrigerate tahini.

Today’s dressing gets a hint of sweetness from the maple syrup. Lemon juice is always nice with tahini.  This dressing is good on green salads containing fruit as well as on spinach salads.  Enjoy.

Prayer Power
Father, we are in awe of Your goodness, Your grace, and Your mercy.  We thank You for pouring out Your blessings of healing and provision on all of our readers.

Link of the Day
Maple Tahini Dressing

Blessings on you as you discover tahini.

“What most moved him was a certain meal on beans.”  Robert Browning

When was the last time you tried a new or different food?

They brought sleeping mats, cooking pots, serving bowls, wheat and barley flour, roasted grain, beans, lentils, honey, butter, sheep, and cheese for David and those who were with him.  (2 Sam. 17:28,29a, NLT)

When Jerry and I first met and married, I was eating a vegetarian diet.  Intrigued with my “Bohemian” lifestyle, he was eager to try some of my “odd-looking” food.  He soon gave up his burgers and fries and began eating lots of vegetables, tofu, and beans.  Oh, we had lots of beans; all colors, kinds, and shapes.  He used to laughingly say that whatever leftover beans we had from dinner would end up in our pancakes the next morning.

This proved to be important training for when God called us to Virginia Beach for Jerry to attend seminary at Regent University nearly twenty years ago.  Jerry received a “buy-out” from his position at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York.  So, while Jerry attended Regent, the Lord allowed us to stretch that “buy-out” for the three years he was in school, enabling him to fully concentrate on his studies.  We ate a LOT of beans!  (Beans are very cheap, in case you’re a non-bean eater.)  I learned to be quite creative in making various bean dishes.

Today we’ll feature one of the least known beans called garbanzo beans.  Also known as chickpeas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickpea), they have a delicious nutlike taste and buttery texture.  They provide a good source of protein that can be enjoyed all year-round and are available either dried or canned.  A very versatile legume, they are a noted ingredient in many Middle Eastern and Indian dishes.  I used to only buy dried beans, soak them in water, and then cook them on top of the stove or in the crock-pot.  However, cooked garbanzo beans from a can work well for making hummus.  I always buy the organically grown beans–believe me there is a great difference in taste.

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for the vast multitude of healthy and tasty foods that You provide for us from all parts of the world.  We also thank You that we live in a time when it is practical for those delightful foods to be shipped to markets near our home.  You truly have thought of everything for our well-being.

Link of the Day
Hummus

Blessings on you as you as you try something new and different this week that you’ve not eaten before.