Anything Is Possible: A story of the buffalo chickpea dip

The baby shower would begin shortly, and the avocado mac and cheese was tucked away and sitting on the chair.

In addition to that, I'm known for being able to make a buffalo chickpea dip.

Basically what you do is you fill a blender with a can of great northern beans, some cashews, seasonings, nutritional yeast, and a good amount of Frank's red hot.

And you blend it wroo000ooosh-roooosh-wrooooosshhhhhh-ro00oo00oooo000oooo00oo00oo-wwrrrroo00000ooosshhhh

You pour chickpeas into the mixture, stir it around, and top it with non-dairy cheddar. Then bake.

Whether I'd make it would depend what time I rolled out of bed and how everything was going with the mac and cheese.

Time was on my side, but the bigger problem was this:

Some days ago, that bottle of Beefeater fell and landed square on the blender. The blender top shattered, and the Beefeater remained.

I still had a working blender -- I had the blade that does the blending -- but not a top part.

Heroically, I used a soda bottle.

I cut a hole in the top part of the bottle to fit on top of the blade, and then a hole in bottom of the bottle to open it up.

It was really satisfying. I wasn't sure it would work but it was still satisfying, just to see the soda bottle on top like that and imagine it maybe working.

I added the components (note: liquid poured last), and then the moment came to press the button and blend it.

The physics of it were essentially like having a real blender top, but it still seemed like this just shouldn't be a thing that works.

But it worked!

It wasn't easy, but it worked. I mean blending this stuff is never easy because it's like a $20 blender and not really meant for food processing, and I think it probably helps to soak and soften the cashews first but I blend them straight up, like a boss. So it's always a battle. But the thing about the soda bottle was, the bottle twists. That's what separated it from a real blender top. So I had to hold it in place as I battled.

After I removed the piece of the blender, that's pretty much how it's supposed to look. That's good enough.

The people wanted the buffalo dip, and there it is. (There's the puree portion of it anyways. The rest is trivial.)

I like to cook and season the chickpeas before I incorporate them.

I'm not sure why. I guess I like them to be inherently good rather than need to be carried by everything else.

You can squish some of the chickpeas if you want that texture. If you're observant you'll notice that I added some shreds of cheddar to stir into the mixture with the chickpeas.

Then I topped it with cheddar and with some fresh oregano from the deck.

And nobody would guess that this was made using a Sunkist bottle!

If you do the math, I think life is something like 8% luck, 2% skill, and 90% how hard you try.

I believe the great Tom Brady would tell us that you can't control your skill or luck, but you can control your level of effort.