Lunch was going to be so easy to talk about … until I got carried away! I had both tahini and chickpeas on hand, and since I already made hummus yesterday, falafel was clearly in order for today!
I loosely used this recipe but of course changed almost everything. I soaked 1/4 cup dry chickpeas in two inches of water overnight. This morning, I drained the chickpeas and then immersion-blended them with the rest of the recipe ingredients. I was making a much smaller batch than what was in the recipe, so I eyeballed/tasted the measurements for everything else. I think I ended up using an overly high ratio of wet things to the chickpeas, so my batter was too wet. I soaked up the extra moisture with about 1/4 cup coarse blue cornmeal:
The resulting mix was still a bit wet, but significantly stickier.
Instead of frying, I decided to bake. I heated the oven to 350 and lined a cookie sheet with parchment. I divided the batter into six balls.
After about 20 minutes in the oven, the balls had flattened somewhat as I had expected they would due to the wet batter.
I let them cool enough to handle and then reformed them into balls, flipped them, and popped them in the oven for another 15 minutes.
And then, for extra measure, I put the falafel under the broiler (minus the parchment paper) for 5 minutes to get them sufficiently crisped.
For the tahini dressing, I mixed the rest of the baby Artisana jar of tahini (about 2 tsp) with 2 tbsp plain yogurt and sprinkles of coriander, cumin, cayenne, and garlic salt & pepper.
I had three of the falafel balls for lunch on a big bed of arugula and topped it with half of the tahini (I’m saving the other half for the other three balls).
They were perfectly crunchy (thanks to the cornmeal) and crisp on the outside and moist on the inside:
It was no Mamoun’s, of course, but it was close!
On the side, I had a mini arugula salad with a couple tbsp tuna humbangu (I was craving that as well) with a dollop of roasted red pepper hummus for color:
Together:
I needed chocolate after this meal, so I went for the other half of my UliMana raw hemp brownie from last night:
I don’t even think brownie is the right word for this. It’s like a solid, perfect, grainy block of dark dark chocolate fudge. Ahhhh. I need to do more research into raw “cooking” and find out how to make this for myself!
I had a few more snacks throughout the afternoon. The rest of my Newman’s spelt pretzels (about 3/4 serving) with 2 more tbsp hummus:
Yerba mate and a plummy gummy:
A raw macaroon:
A hard-boiled egg with pepper:
And a mug of soymilky Numi Emperor’s Puerh tea. Following the instructions on the bag, I brought “regal waters” to a boil and steeped for 3-5 minutes “to capture the full taste of this majestic tea.” Numi describes this black tea as bold and malty, and I certainly needed both of those this evening! I’m still dragging from my restless doggy night last night, and I’m heading out to a birthday party in a few — my goal is to last longer than an hour there. Hopefully, the tea helps. So far, it just tastes like regular black tea. Word is that the party will have food, too, so that’s why I kept my evening eating to a minimum.
What do you want to learn to make for yourself?
Eventually, I made my way to the gym for some bicycling (no running!) and arms. When I got home, I decided that I needed to remedy the no-hummus situation. I cooked a bunch of chickpeas from dry and combined about 1/2 cup of them with a piece of roasted red pepper, Italian seasoning, a whole garlic clove, coarse sea salt, and 1/2 a baby jar of 
Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition 