Lebanese recipe
In these moments of confinement, we can feel uncertain, fear, and even panic about what is happening. It is normal; we are all fighting together against an unknown virus. But, it is also time to feel proud of our everyday heroes (health workers, truck drivers, farmers, replenishers, cleaners …) and for the citizen solidarity that is emerging.
Spending all day at home with the family can end up being exhausting. Children, daily school tasks, teleworking, cooking, playing, exercising … We want to help you!
“What you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and ultimately your mood,” says Harvard Medical School.
In addition to eating healthy, it is important to be honest with our roommates, whether they are our partners, roommates or our family. We are spending 24 hours together, wall to wall and this can cause unknown feelings or sensations, both sweet and bitter, that it is better not to hide and express them to feel liberated.
To make dinner or snack time fun and allow us to express the feelings that this quarantine leaves us, we have created a recipe: Rainbow hummus!
Hummus or tahini is a typical dish in the Middle East that stands out for its great health benefits. It’s a great protein-rich vegan dish that helps reduce sugar cravings and increases energy. Also, it helps burn belly fat by replacing this with unhealthy sugary options, such as ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard …
What do we need to prepare our rainbow hummus?
The main ingredient is cooked chickpeas, but to make our rainbow hummus we will cook two more variants, in addition to the traditional original recipe: purple beet hummus and green spinach hummus. In this way, we can build our rainbow with yellow hummus, purple hummus, and green hummus.
To cook yellow hummus we will need: cooked chickpeas, water, olive oil, tahini or toasted sesame seeds, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, sweet pepper and salt.
Preparation is simple:
Wash the chickpeas, peel the garlic and squeeze half a lemon.
Put all the ingredients in the blender, except the sweet pepper. Add water depending on the thickness of the hummus, but: Remember! It is not a puree; it should be thick.
Serve the hummus, adding the sweet pepper on top and a drizzle of olive oil.
To be able to cook the green hummus, we have to add a bunch of spinach to our previous recipe when putting the ingredients in the blender. And, to get the purple hummus, we will add beets instead of spinach.
Each color will represent our state of mind
The psychology of color is a field of study that is aimed at analyzing the effect of colors on perception and human behavior. For this reason, we will seek that the different colors with which our hummus will emerge, depending on the ingredients, interpret our mood to achieve a more sincere communication and relationship with our family during this quarantine. How are you dealing with the mood in your home?
Each color will represent a state of mind. For example, the color yellow signifies energy, creativity, joy and vitality. You can associate traditional hummus or hummus with turmeric to the happiness of being with your family sharing moments at home.
On the other hand, green, in the psychology of color, signifies confidence, tranquility and spontaneity. In this case, the spinach or avocado hummus will represent trust in the family and the peace of mind that being at home brings.
The beet hummus will represent the ambition that this situation improves soon or compassion for all those people who are going through such difficult times.
If we want to continue drawing our rainbow hummus and try new flavors, colors and emotions, we can add pumpkin or carrot to our initial recipe, for example. In this way, we will get an orange hummus that will represent the courage to face this crisis.
If we add red cabbage, our hummus will turn blue. A color that, according to color psychology, signifies security, loyalty, and peace. Our red cabbage hummus will represent loyalty to our family and the security to get out of this situation together.
In this way, we can use this dish as a starting point to start a stimulating family conversation, in addition to eating healthy between meals without fattening your abdomen. Creativity is also important to take care of our mental and physical health!
