Hummus happiness

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/05/2018 (2991 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To toast International Hummus Day, which falls on Sunday, May 13, let’s begin with the story of how Mary MacLean, founder of Happy Dance Hummus, came up with her jolly-sounding enterprise’s moniker in the first place.

In 2014, MacLean, a high school music teacher, and her husband Ron MacLean (no, not that Ron MacLean) were entertaining a friend originally from El Salvador at their home in East St. Paul. At some point she put out a few snacks, including a bowl of her “famous” homemade garlic jalopeño hummus. Unfamiliar with hummus, their guest asked what was in it, precisely. The second MacLean got to puréed chickpeas while listing the ingredients, he got a sour look on his face and remarked there was a zero per cent chance it would be going anywhere near his mouth.

Only because the married mother of four refused to take no for an answer, he finally agreed to give peas a chance, so to speak, by spooning a bit on a tortilla chip. Immediately after tasting it, he grinned from ear to ear and broke into a 10-second jig. Months later, when MacLean was debating what to call her venture, which she started after being told for years by friends and family members her hummus was better than any commercial brand they’d tried, she thought back to that impromptu performance and said to herself, “OK, Happy Dance Hummus it is.”

“It’s funny because now people send me videos they’ve recorded on their phone of themselves or somebody they know doing a happy dance after eating my hummus,” MacLean says, seated in a café at the Johnston Terminal at The Forks. “I’ve actually thought about putting something together showcasing a bunch of different people dancing, and playing it on a screen for passers-by to enjoy, when I’m at a market or wherever. That would be so much fun, don’t you think?”

More about MacLean and her biz in a second, but we should probably explain how a day devoted to a humble dip that goes as well with sliced-up vegetables as it does with scrambled eggs or baked potatoes came to be.

Six years ago, Ben Lang, an Israeli-American, was living in Herzliya, a city on Israel’s central coast, near Tel Aviv. After reading about a “holiday” honouring Nutella (World Nutella Day is Feb. 5 but if you’re a fan of the hazelnut spread, you already know that) he wondered if there was an equivalent in regards to hummus, long one of his favourite foodstuffs. Learning there wasn’t, he went to work creating International Hummus Day, which, according to his website www.hummusday.com, aims to “bring people together from around the world, in particular the Middle East,” where the garlicky dip has been a staple for centuries.

“This will be our sixth year and it’s just gotten bigger and bigger over time,” Lang says over the phone from his home in San Francisco. “Plus there are so many different brands and varieties available now, it only helps drive the popularity of (International Hummus Day).”

Lang, who cites a cookie dough hummus as the most bizarre flavour he’s sampled to date, posts a map on his website that pins hundreds of locales around the globe that feature hummus on their menu, including Hummus Amongus in Dallas, Hummus House in Brisbane, Australia, and Dr. Hummus in Budapest.

This month, he’s also added a list of promotions tied to the event, such as one at the Hummus & Pita Co. in New York City, which intends to unveil the world’s first-ever hummus shake, sometime tomorrow afternoon.

“There are also a ton of places organizing hummus get-togethers and parties. Last year, there was a restaurant in Europe that gave out free hummus to refugees, which was nice because for many of them, it was like getting a little taste of home.”

MacLean laughs and says if you had run into her a decade or so ago, she would have been the last person on the planet you would have picked to peddle hummus. Up until then, she’d only eaten hummus once. But because she found it incredibly bland, whenever somebody offered her some, her response was always along the lines of been there, ate that.

“About 10 years ago I was at a friend’s place when she brought out some hummus and veggies,” she continues. “When I told her I’d had hummus before and wasn’t a big fan, she said, ‘Yeah, but you haven’t had mine.’ Well, she couldn’t have been more right. Pretty soon, I was making it at home for my family, experimenting with different ingredients and flavour combinations, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

MacLean launched Happy Dance Hummus in 2015 at a farmer’s market at the Health Sciences Centre. Unsure how much to bring along, she showed up with 40 250-gram containers, telling herself she’d be over the moon if she sold half that many. Juxtapose that with last weekend when she and her daughter, Lydia, who handles her social media and helps her out on market days, sold close to 2,500 containers of hummus at Third + Bird’s annual spring market, in the basement of the downtown Bay store.

When MacLean isn’t selling her hummus at pop-up events or weekly, summertime farmers’ markets at Manitoba Hydro Place and Pine Ridge Hollow, she welcomes customers to a commercial kitchen on Panet Road, where she produces her hummus around her teaching schedule.

“Pick-up is Wednesdays between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. and what people do is text me when they arrive, at which point I walk out the door and hand them their hummus through their car window. It’s become a bit like a hummus drive-thru, literally,” she says.

Soon, fans of Happy Dance Hummus will be able to purchase it at a number of Winnipeg stores as well, including Miller’s Meats’ four city locations.

Chelsey Sandberg, whose grandparents Ken and Cathy Miller founded their namesake meat market in 1971, tried Happy Dance Hummus for the first time last November, at a Christmas market where MacLean was offering free samples. After checking out the other vendors there, Sandberg returned to MacLean’s booth 30 minutes later to buy a few containers, only to discover MacLean had sold out in the half-hour she’d be gone.

“I told her we’d be interested in carrying her hummus at our stores, as it’s the exact type of product we like to sell: locally-produced, healthy and delicious,” says Sandberg.

“Everyone in my family loves hummus,” Sandberg goes on, noting their intention is to offer each of MacLean’s four flavours, creamy dill, curry masala, chipotle lime and garlic jalopeño. “It goes so well on a charcuterie board, paired with crackers, meat and cheese.”

For the time being, MacLean is growing her business slowly, not wanting to make the mistake of taking on more than she can handle. (That and she’s being kept busy rehearsing her students for a large-scale spring concert their school is staging at the end of May.)

“No lie, I receive emails every week from stores wanting to stock my hummus, but at this point I’m just sort of picking and choosing. My father was an entrepreneur and so was his father and my mother’s father, but this is all new to me.”

That said, if there’s one thing MacLean may need to figure out sooner rather than later, it’s how to ship her wares overseas.

“My second eldest daughter is moving to England and she told me one of her greatest pains is that she won’t have Happy Dance Hummus any more. So for sure, we might have to make that a future goal.”

For more information, go to www.happydancehummus.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca