avocado chickpea salad

In my quest to eat one vegan meal a day [I mentioned it in passing in my GYST: Food/Diet post] I'm trying new recipes and this one came up. 

I'm in love with it after putting one tiny bite in my mouth. Holy cow.

The original was from Two Peas & Their Pod, but of course I changed a few things. I'm not a big bread eater, so I nixed the whole "sandwich" thing. Instead I made the chickpea [do you say "garbanzo" or "chickpea"?] and avocado mixture and plopped it on a bed of baby greens. Today I ate it with a couple of Wasa crackers for some crunch.

Let's talk about avocados. A few years ago my friends, Jess & Jake told me their trick to always having perfectly ripe avocados. Now I shall share it with you: buy the rock-hard avocados a few days before you're going to want to use them and let those babies sit out on your counter until they're ripe. Once they've ripened you can either a) eat them or b) put them in your refrigerator for up to a week. That last part is my own little addendum. These avocados have been ready since last Thursday and they're still *perfect* because the refrigeration stopped the ripening process and they didn't get beaten against anything to give them bruises after they ripened.

These six weeks of classes, I'm eating on the go out of plastic containers more often than not, so I've been trying to prepare foods that can travel with me. I don't particularly like to eat out at the fast, cheap places [I definitely like to eat out at the expensive, sit-down places] on a daily basis. This is one of my made-for-the-week meals. You could totally cut this in half really easily. 

Avocado Chickpea Salad

-2 cans (15oz) Chickpeas/Garbanzo beans, drained

-2 Avocados

-Lime Juice (fresh is better of course, but I used about 2 Tbsp of a prepared lime juice)

-Cilantro

-1 tsp Salt

-1 tsp Onion Powder

-1/2 tsp Garlic Powder

Smash the chickpeas, avocados, and lime juice together. Chop the cilantro and add the spices and mix it. Give it a taste and see if you need more of anything. (-: