hummus Archives - Curiously Carmen

Many people are surprised when they found out that many sauces and dips include dairy. I was also surprised to find out how limited my options were with sauce and dips! Now, I usually just order food without sauce because they most likely have dairy, unless it’s some sort of vinaigrette or Asian style sauce.
So, I was quite happy when Habibi’s Mediterranean Foods contacted me and told me they had dairy free options! In fact, most of their dips and spreads are dairy free with the exception of Tsaziki and Labneh. I knew I had to try them!

I tried three of their hummus flavours: sriracha, Lebanese, and basil & garlic. In addition to the hummus, I tried the lebanese garlic spread as well.

Habibi’s spreads are super versatile, and you can eat this with anything you want! I used my hummus and spreads for veggie dips, crackers, sandwiches, and tortilla chips. The ingredients are all natural, and are all easily recognized which is always a plus!
Srircha jalapeno hummus: I was expecting this to be pretty spicy, but that wasn’t the case at all. It was very mild with only the slightest hint of spice. I didn’t taste any srircha in here.
Ingredients: chickpeas, tahini, fresh jalapeno, olive oil, Sriracha, fresh garlic, sea salt, vinegar, citric acid.

Lebanese style hummus: The Lebanese style was the most simple one, suitable for those who just want good ol’ hummus. I liked using this in my sandwiches along with slices of deli meat and veggies. It added some protein and more flavour to my sandwich.
Ingredients: chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, fresh garlic, sea salt, vinegar, citric acid

Basil garlic hummus: This was a personal favourite for the boyfriend and his brother. I really enjoyed this flavour too! We all love anything garlicky so we enjoyed this. Using this dip was pretty much the only reason why I willingly ate raw veggies, LOL.
Ingredients: chickpeas, fresh garlic, fresh basil, tahini (sesame paste), olive oil, vinegar, pure citric acid , sea salt

Garlic sauce: Moving away from the hummus now, the garlic sauce was really good too. There was a VERY strong and concentrated garlic taste which made it spicy. I absolutely LOVED this and couldn’t stop snacking on this with crackers. The only thing I should warn you about is that your mouth will smell strongly of garlic afterwards, so have gum or a toothbrush and toothpaste handy!

Overall, I really enjoyed Habibi’s and will be picking up more at the grocery store! Since the ingredients are all natural, they spoil relatively fast. After a month of having it in the fridge, I noticed that mold had started to grow in the hummus and spread – that’s when you know they have no preservatives!

Retailers include Whole Foods Market, Choices Market, IGA, Donald’s Market, Fresh Street Market, Fairway Market, Loblaws, Nature’s Fare, SPUD, and other independent grocers. The retail prices range between $3.75-4.99.

Yay!

Press products featured. Opinions are own.

The Green Moustache offers healthy, alternative eats but the thing that sold me to visit was their dairy free cheesecake, since I can’t eat dairy anymore but want my cheesecake!

For starters, after driving to their West side location (they also have one in Whistler) and meeting up with Avocado and another friend, I was so disappointed when I was told they didn’t have any cheesecake that day. Since we made the trip here already, we figured we might as well share some other items.

‘Hook’ smoothie, 12 oz $6.50: Cocoa, mint, goji berries, honey, banana and almond milk. They were out of the honey so they told us they substituted maple syrup instead. Not a big deal, but how do you run out of honey when that is one of the main ingredients in all your drinks, and you pride your smoothies on not using sugar?

This basically tasted like a dark chocolate banana smoothie, with hints of mint to it. I liked that it wasn’t too sweet.
Buddha bowl, $9.50: An assortment of healthy greens, quinoa, and rice. AGAIN, they didn’t have ripe avocado on hand so they gave us hummus instead. That was another disappointment since we both love avocado.

This bowl was filled with an abundance of fresh ingredients, and was really filling due to the brown rice. It had a combination of both sweet and savoury, and soft/crunchy textures.

Just to re-cap, each item we ordered so far has had an ingredient unavailable, or just the dish was entirely unavailable itself. Not impressed….
Raw chili, $9.95: The chili is served a bit chilled/room temperature, something that I found a bit odd. Unfortunately, we found a rubber band piece in our dish. When we asked about it, the staff apologized and said that this was their last bowl of chili so they wouldn’t be able to make us a new one. We came at 12:30 pm and it wasn’t even busy, yet this was your last bowl?

To add to the disappointment, the chili was incredibly salty. It was hard to eat more than 2-3 spoonfuls at once because it was just too salty, even with the brown rice. We were glad that had the refreshing buddha bowl, and would alternate.

Eventually, we just gave up on eating this and packed it up – my friend came up with the idea to eat this with tortilla chips instead, which would probably taste better.
Chocolate walnut fudge brownie, $3.50: To make up for the rubber band and having so many items unavailable, we were offered a complementary brownie as an apology. We enjoyed the brownie, and I liked how it wasn’t that sweet and probably made with dark chocolate. It was sweetened with dates as well.

Although service was very friendly and knowledgeable, I’m not sure if I’ll return or recommend this place as I left disappointed at how many items were missing from our dish. It’s definitely not worth driving out to this area if you aren’t already here.

I understand that occasionally, restaurants will run out of certain items, which is totally understandable and fair. But judging from how many items were unavailable just shows disorganization from the establishment.

Thanks for reading,

Carmen