Both sadly and excitingly (not sure if that is even a word) I am on the final day of my undergraduate career. It has been a… interesting four years. Needless to say, I am happy to never have to go to a random unrelated class, stay in a dorm, or fill in another bubble sheet. The very bane of my existence.

It really is the simple things in life.

That being said, I am not done yet. I still have one more final standing in between me and my freedom and then my mom and I begin the long drive back to Minnesota with absolutely no stops at all. But we will see if we can do this one more time. For memory’s sake.

We have done this drive several times before over the past couple of years because, for starters, it’s nice to have a car on campus and not be stranded. Especially when you are an out-of-stater. So we make the haul in the beginning of the year with a couple of stops. Neither my mom or I am in a rush to get onto campus and back in a dorm.

But then once my last final is done, I just want to get home to my bed and not stay in random hotels over the course of the next couple of days. And thus, the 22 hours nonstop tradition began.

It is a bonding experience, to say the least, but it has taken a couple of times to perfect. One of the most important pieces is definitely the snacks. The first year we bought cupcakes and nothing else… needless to say, we were not looking forward to another 20 hours in the car after those.

After that fun little torture, we have stuck to pretty healthy snacks. Grapes, cherries, vegetables, the usual. And hummus is a must have staple that helps to spice up the vegetables in our cooler.

But, surprisingly enough, I don’t like tahini. It has nothing to do with the consistency but there is just something about the taste that often times can ruin a good batch of hummus for me. Is anybody else like that or just me?

Because of this, I often think about what other nut Butter I could use to replace the tahini in recipes that require it without overpowering the other flavors.

Spoiler Alert: It’s cashew or walnut butter.

Either nut butter has a distinct taste. But it is nowhere near as strong as the flavor in other nut butters like peanut butter or almond butter, which was exactly what I needed for this hummus.

One more word of advice, I highly suggest using raw or natural nut butter. For me at least, they seem much smoother and easy to blend into the mixture. More processed butters are thicker and may make the hummus a more gluey consistency than you would want.

In addition to changing the nut butter, I also decided to change up the bean to another… bean… legume… a pea. For some reason, this gives the hummus a kind of sweeter taste to it that is absolutely phenomenal and is so refreshing to have when you are packed in a car tighter than a can of sardines.

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