Hummus, it's what's for dinner?

I love hummus! Roasted garlic or roasted red pepper are my favorite variations, but I really like any kind of hummus and pita bread (or veggies!) for snacking. I never considered using it as an entree (unless it's part of a "snacks for dinner" line up like I've done in the past), until I saw a recipe in an email from Epicurious (my main online source for recipe inspiration).  They posted a recipe for Hummus Dinner Bowls with Spiced Ground Beef and Tomatoes that sounded really interesting, so I thought I would give it a go, despite the extremely long recipe name.  LOL

It does call for making your own hummus, but if you use canned chick peas, it's really easy to do (and more economical than buying already-made hummus).  However, no one is going think less of you if you take a short cut, especially on busy nights when you need to get something on the table FAST! One more plug for making your own hummus, though: you can make it ahead of time if you know that you're going to be pressed for time the night you want to make this. You could also put together the tomato salad ahead of time, so that the only thing you have to do was cook the ground beef, then put the bowls together.

The salad is also pretty simple: tomatoes, lemon juice, parsley. It's a nice salad to have in your arsenal, especially if you have a lot of tomatoes from your garden to use up.





















All you do with the beef is brown it in a skillet with the spices:

Like I said, the hardest part, really, was browning the beef. The combination of spices was really tasty! And the whole family gobbled up every bite! The final product was very filling.

You wouldn't think that of something we generally think of as a snack food, but it was fun to kind of turn things upside down and look at a known food in a new way! If you are vegetarian, this could easily be adapted, substituting roasted vegetables for the ground beef.  If you're a cheese fan, I think throwing some feta on there would be tasty, too!

Here's the link to the recipe again, for Hummus Dinner Bowls. If you are inspired to make this, let me know what you think!