What goes with carrot sticks?

Even I wouldn't want to live on pastrycream alone. I'd miss out on too many other things. Here's a plate of bits an pieces. I had carrots, I wanted something else after I'd polished off the ranch dip. Hummus goes with carrots! And whaddaya know, the sesame paste I'd been using for my chinese noodle salad workd just dandy for making hummus. But you need something texturally as well as visually interesting to eat with hummus, carrots or no carrots. So I made taboulli. I know you're supposed to make it with bulghur, but I didn't have any of that, so I used a little quinoa. Homemade wheat toast triangles is pretty pretty good with hummus too, if you don't have any pita. Plus olives and yogurt of course, while you got the whole mediterranean thing going.

Hummus:

half a can of garbanzo beans, with the bean water
juice of one lemon
a dash of cayenne
2 tablespoons of tahini aka sesame paste
a small clove of garlic
a couple tablespoons of olive oil
salt to taste

Put everything in a food processor and puree it. Washing the processor is the hardest part of the recipe; it is, to be perfectly honest, the reason I don't make hummus very often. Now you know just how lazy I am.


Taboulli:

1/4 cup quinoa

1/2 cup parsley before chopping
a dozen small mint leaves
1 small tomato
salt
olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
dash of cumin
dash of cayenne
pinch of ground coriander

Bring the quinoa to a boil in about a cup of water. After it has boiled for about a minute, drain the water off, put in fresh water and cook as you would pasta. Drain the quinoa and let it cool completely. It helps to have a pretty fine sieve. Once the grains are cool, mince the parsley and mint, dice the tomato and toss all the ingredients together.

Now that I think about it, that's a lot of fuss just to eat my carrot sticks.