down to the core: I hope I got potluck-y

Yesterday morning, along with thousands of other high school juniors, I took the SATs. This was my second time taking them, and so the shock of the test's duration was a little less prevalent, and I was just anxious to get them over and done with. And when they were done, I was really happy. I don't know exactly how I think they went, because thinking back to all the questions I debated between A and C I think now that maybe I guessed wrong. But overall, I just hope I got lucky with my guessed answers. We'll see in 19 days when scores come out, I guess.

Anyway, I was really just happy to be done with the test. Until I got home and went straight to my midterm review packets and started studying Calculus. I couldn't complain though, because I was taking a very long study break later on to go to my friend Sophie's house for a pot-luck dinner, which is right up my friend's and my alley. For those of you who may not know what a pot-luck is, each of my friends brought something different and we all sat down for a cute dinner together. We ended up sitting at Sophie's kitchen table for a few hours just talking, it was a pretty lovely night. No matter how I did on the SATs, being with my best friends for the night was so fun (as always) and I know for sure that I got lucky finding those girls.

And oh yeah, the food was really good too. Lindsay made mac and cheese, Jess made a spinach penne (which I ended up eating all the spinach out of because I liked it so much), Sophie made salad, Zoe made bruschetta, and I made Sriracha (spicy) hummus. Let me tell you, I don't think I'll ever buy hummus in the stores again.

Our dinner table!

There are a lot of pluses to making your own hummus. One is that you know exactly what's going into it (which I always like). Also, the ingredients are really good for you! Chick peas are packed with protein, fiber, and healthy carbohydrates. Also, eating spicy food (especially for an appetizer when a delicious meal is coming right after) forces a lot of people to eat less. As good as Sriracha is, it's hard to eat so much of it at once (even for spicy-food-lovers like me), and so it causes a lot of people not to overeat.

My mom and I had a little bit of a predicament when making the hummus since we don't have a food processor (which I highly advise for this), but in the end we figured it out. Maybe we got lucky that somewhere hidden deep in the cabinet's of my laundry room there was a mini Cuisinart, but either way it saved us.

Here's what you'll need:
1 can chickpeas
2 tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
lemon juice, from a whole lemon
dash of salt and pepper
2 heaping tbsp tahini
2-3 tbsp Sriracha hot sauce (depending on how hot you want it - I used 2 tbsp and it was moderately hot)

1. Drain chickpeas, mince garlic, and juice a lemon. Measure out the remainder of the ingredients.
*The tahini was a little tricky to take out of the jar since there's a lot of liquid on top, but just mix it around a bit and then scoop out the solid.

2. Add all the ingredients to your food processor or blender.
*This should work even though I had trouble with it. The recipe I used only called for 1 tbsp of lemon juice,and the blender couldn't handle mixing all the solids I had without the juice. So I ended up transferring everything to the mini-Cuisinart, but with more lemon juice the blender should work, and it still tastes super delicious!)