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January 8: A Satellite Dish of Hummus
Fifty chefs in the Arab Israeli town of Abu Gosh set the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest dish of hummus when they filled a 20-foot satellite dish with 8992.5 pounds of the chickpea mash on this date in 2010. Lebanon would regain the title, however, in May of the same year, when 300 Lebanese chefs in the village of al-Fanar, near Beirut, mashed up 22,994 pounds of chickpeas, two tons of sesame paste, two tons of lemon juice and 154 pounds of olive oil (pictured at left). The very next day, the Lebanese also set the Guinness record for falafel by frying five tons of the stuff.
“Yossi Alpher (ex-Mossad chief): Hummus has nothing to do with Hamas. It’s a food, OK? We eat it. They eat it.
Ghassan Khatib (former Palestinian minister): It’s vegetarian. It’s healthy. It’s beans.” —From Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno
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