Last night began another round of hippy food shopping. Thankfully I have found a Trader Joe’s within reasonable distance from my house. Another plus to my trip. I discovered that Trader Joe’s is actually reasonably priced and my designer rice cakes were priced more like designer outlet rice cakes. Sadly they had no rice bread to speak of, although I will speak of it, so I will have to mix my own plaster if I want any sandwiches this week. Currently this puts a damper on my tuna plans for tomorrow.

I was also happy to find yet another suitable marinara sauce on my quest to find the ultimate sauce that fits within my little regimen. Perhaps this one will be less oniony. I will post my results later, along with appropriate photos and let you decide. Chances are, you’ll just buy the same old Classico you bought before.

Along with this gem, I also found a whole new world of what I had formerly considered pretentious hippy food. You know, something that would have been served at Smith College for dinner. Something that would have had everyone who hadn’t showered that day and/or wanted to date my sister, not that I have one, saying in a tired, burned-out-from-the-troubles-of-being-rich voice “Oh, I can’t wait for dinner. I loooooove hummus… I know this place in the city…” yadda, yadda, yadda.

Anyway, up until this moment something as unimpressive as hummus, was foo foo mush. Taboulie…taboulie I envisioned as some kind of dried meat product and Baba Ganoush was some kind of children’s fantasy much like Santa Claus. Luckily, my boyfriend’s family is from one of those countries where recipes contain no less than five items I have never heard of, many of which have been dried or pickled or are on the verge of being at any moment, and usually require at least a fortnight and perhaps some kind of dance to complete. So, he’s a little more adventurous and dare I say, educated, in this regard, and to my surprise, the hummus he grabbed turned out to be a delight. Now, it may be because it has a similar texture and color to cookie dough, or the fact that it contained garlic, or even the fact that it gave my “Nut Thins” crackers a purpose in life, but I admit - I gorged myself on hummus last night.

And you know, it turns out taboulie is made entirely of some of my favorite ingredients and Baba Ganoush looks promising as well - well, maybe sounds promising. None of these things look anything like promising. I even had flashbacks to the mediteranean place we went to in San Francisco and now I understand a little better what everyone else had ordered while I had the Plain Jane Chicken Kabobs. Now I know I missed out, and indeed, there were no snake babies or quail eggs being eaten that night.