Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Yummy Chickpea salad!

I've had a couple of comments lately about how I haven't been posting. I think on my last one I mentioned having been seriously unmotivated, and that continued for a while but the urge to cook and write is definitely coming back!

For a quick one today, I decided to make a chickpea salad. This is inspired by the fact that I've often been ordering one for lunch at work, and really thought that I could make my own that's both cheaper and better. Also, a few weeks back my friend Jacqui of Fashion & Pho brought a chickpea salad to our private lacquer painting session at a friend's house, and it was delicious!
In Jacqui's salad there were chickpeas, sundried tomatoes, raisins, onion, sunflower seeds, and feta cheese, with a simple vinaigrette dressing. The raisins gave it a lovely sweetness, while the sunflower seeds and onion provided a bit of crunch. Yum!

In mine I decided to go with a serious veggie crunch. I used canned chickpeas (because my dried ones are in a drawer at work, don't even ask why!), rinsed them well, and added chopped onion, red and green pepper, and tomatoes. I'd bought some honey roasted sunflower seeds that I threw in (I was looking for plain ones, but these were the only ones I could find that I wouldn't have to spend hours cracking open myself!) along with cilantro (coriander) and feta cheese. I tied it all together with a mixture of the oil from the feta cheese jar and some lime juice, and put some in a bowl and started eating before I realized I'd forgotten to season it! With a bit of salt, pepper, and ground cumin, it was delicious!

Try your own chickpea salad. The possibilities for ingredients are endless, and it's really healthy!