The Mysterious Origin of Lumpy Hummus
In ancient times, before Tesla, before Edison, before HECO, people made hummus by hand! During the process of mashing, straining, mixing and tasting, these proto-hummussarians concocted a hummus that was primitive, raw and to the chagrin of the modern foodie, had lumps in it! Now in defense of these primordial hummus makers, they didn’t know any better. Lacking in cuisine arts and high speed blenders, to them hummus was lumpy, but it was good. How little did they know that this tradition would almost become extinct. In the advent of the modern world, hummus makers came to rely upon the technological marvels of the age and over time, lumpy hummus sadly disappeared. For generations people grew accustomed to smooth hummus and eventually lumps became declasse, an affront to the palette and an undesirable no-no on the appetizer table of society. In the 60’s, hippie weirdos embraced all sorts of odd and strange customs. Perhaps the strangest of all was the health food movement. Imagine people rejecting our highly processed, chemical laden, artificial, genetically modified, modern psuedo-food and wanting to eat “natural” food like people did for thousands of years. These rejectors of corporate food eventually chipped away at the new standard of processed fluff and joined with others of like mind to start the slow food movement and other back to nature spin offs like the granola bar, craft brewed beer and rice cakes. In the process they found, quite accidentally, the ancient recipe for hummus. One night the electricity went off at the commune and one of these vintage back to nature people was just starting to make hummus. There was a major problem however, the blender didn’t work. So the desperate hippie chanted to the garbanzo goddess for an answer. Suddenly, in a diffused ball of light, a glowing garbanzo bean appeared and psychically transferred the recipe to the nature dude. Channeling the spirit of the ancient hummussarians, the nature dude picked up a hand held potato masher and began to mash the chickpeas. He mashed and mashed and
mashed until he almost passed out but he couldn’t get all the lumps out. Resigned to social rejection and being the laughing stock of the potluck, our vintage hero secretly set the bowl of lumpy hummus on the table and melted into the background. As sometimes happens with events that change the direction of civilization, the utterly improbable happened. People ate the lumpy hummus! Not only did they eat it but they liked it. Perhaps this was due to a major munchie issue or the huge bowl of organic blue corn chips that someone brought but wham, slam the lumpy hummus was gone. Our reluctant hero came clean and admitted what happened and told the secret that the hummus was mixed by hand. From that humble beginning, after much rejection, scorn, ridicule and disdain, Lumpy Hummus has now gone mainstream. Some say it would never happen. Some people have been waiting their whole lives for this moment. If you believe in liberation, you can rejoice. Hummus is free to be lumpy and so are you!