Chickpeas and Lumpia

 Due to a busy schedule, please forgive me if your comment isn't published or I respond in a timely manner. I will try to do both as soon as I can. 

My wife often has to eat and work at the same time and so takes a lot of finger type foods. One of her favorites to take is homemade hummus. Since the ones found in stores are often plagued with salmonella or other additives, we prefer to make our own and so years ago, I would pressure can chickpeas for my wife to later turn into hummus. By pressure canning them, the chickpeas are soft and ready to be blended up with choice of seasoning and are shelf stable. It is a fairly simple process but to do a batch, still takes most of the day. I have to boil the peas briefly, rinse them, boil them again for a bit longer, hot pack and then can them for 75 minutes per canner load. This batch took two canner loads but yielded 13 pints of ready to make hummus which will probably last us most of the year. Despite leaving ample room for head heights in the jars, I still suffered a few with some siphoning, where the liquid inside the jar makes it way out. I just find it hard to pressure can something for that long without sometimes siphoning happening. Other than some discoloration after a number of months on the peas left out of the liquid, there doesn't seem to be any problems. 

Being in an ethnically diverse family, my kids are exposed to twice as many cultures as many of their peers. Still when my oldest came home and said her AP English class was doing a potluck and asked if she could take lumpia to it, I was a bit surprised. Lumpia is a Filipino dish that can be filled with a variety of things from vegetables to seafood depending on the area of the Philippines one is from. Our version is from the northern mountains and is a pork and minced carrot filling that everyone who eats them seems to love. So my wife bought the ingredients and I set out to roll them up in preparation of the potluck several days in advance. Out of the blue, my oldest and youngest both decided they wanted to help roll up the lumpia and so I spent an hour teaching them how to roll lumpia which pleased me greatly. Back when I was still dating my wife and meeting her extended family for the first time for a pre-wedding blessing, one of her aunts taught me how to roll lumpia. It takes a little bit of practice to become good, it is considered a work of art and much desired. Whenever invited to Fil-Am potlucks, I am often requested to bring lumpia.