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. (-: 

Corn Salad

I'm moving everything from the cooking closet [my other blog that has been inactive for over a year] over here to MN365. I'm decluttering. Hope it's not too annoying! (-:

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This is from Summer 2012.

I'm home in Kansas and we've had corn out the wazoo this week! Therefore, I made a salad.

While I was cooking this was happening. Have you seen the sunset [and sunrise] in Kansas? BEST SKIES EVER. I view it as Kansas' claim to fame.
Not basketball.
Not wheat.
Not sunflowers.
Not tornados.
SKY.

I've been kind of into salads this summer and I could get into grilled corn, except I don't have a grill, so I'll grill when I can.

This is one that's been on my mind since last summer when Sarah made it for a barbecue months and month ago. Seriously. Except I don't remember any of the details she just said: corn, avocado, cilantro and lime.

I said, "Tomato would be good in that."

My mouth said, "Yes!"

So I did it.

Sarah found the original recipe in Martha Stewart Magazine, but I couldn't find it on the interwebs so I made it up and wrote it down. Now, I will share it with you.

Dressing: LIME a touch of oil and spices. It's all about the lime though.

Corn Salad

• 5-6 ears of corn
• 2 small tomatoes
• 2 avocados
• 2 limes
• cilantro
• oil of choice [Olive or a mild vegetable oil]
• salt-n-pepper
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• hot sauce of choice [Frank's has my heart]

Clean your ears of corn and grill it until slightly charred. Let cool and cut the kernels off the cob with a sharp knife. Chop your avocados [spritz with half a lime so they don't get brown], dice those tomatoes, and snip that cilantro. Combine with the corn and put in a bowl. In a small jar, juice the remaining 1 1/2 limes, add 2 Tbsp oil, 1 tsp salt, pepper to taste, 1/4 tsp onion powder, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, and around 10 shakes [more or less] of your favorite hot sauce. Shake and pour over the corn mixture. Toss gently.

I prefer this salad at room temperature, but it will keep for 24 hours in the fridge if you can't finish it off in one sitting. (-:

ENJOY!

Beets, Blue Cheese, and Chickpea Salad

I'm moving everything from the cooking closet [my other blog that has been inactive for over a year] over here to MN365. I'm decluttering. Hope it's not too annoying! (-:

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I don't know if I was extra hungry for lunch today [by "today" I mean sometime in March 2012] or if this was just THE BEST SALAD EVER, but you need to make this salad. ASAP.

Methinks, tomorrow sounds like a good time.
(-:

Also, I want "methinks" to be revived. Mostly because methinks, "methinks" is so funny. Who says that?!?!

Generally, I'm pretty sure that salads I make at home are crappy. Why are they crappy? Because I like to put too much on them. There's so much going on I can't distinguish anything in my mouth. No bueno. I need to plan more frequently because when I have a plan I can exercise some topping-control.

This salad is basically three toppings, dressing and your lettuce. KISS it: Keep It Simple Stupid. I learned that at basketball camp in 6th grade.

OK, the chickpeas (aka garbanzos) are spicy, salty, crunchy texture on this salad and they take about 30 minutes of cooking time.

I loosely followed the directions from Steamy Kitchen's Crispy Roasted Chickpeas. The "loosely" means I didn't read through everything and I salted and seasoned my chickpeas before I baked them, and I didn't bake them quite long enough because I was impatient. As Steamy Kitchen recommends, use whatever seasoning you like, I had a jar of Italian Dressing Base which was my seasoning choice (and a very good choice!) when I roasted my garbanzos.

These are so yummy and nutty when they're crunchy (or even slightly crunchy). If you don't love chickpeas straight from the can, I would recommend trying this, it totally changes them.

How do you feel about beets? It seems to me that they're a love-'em/hate-'em kind of thing. I am the former. BIG TIME. I LOVE BEETS. Oh, how I love them. The color! The texture! The flavor! I should write a song about it, if I wrote songs. Which I don't.

These are beets my grandma pickled from last summer. Prizes for helping watch her dog while she and my grandpa were in Florida. I will always take fresh, canned or frozen vegetables for payment. Would anyone like to barter?

The dressing:

It's all about proportions. Just mix the amount of each ingredient (mustard, brown sugar, spices, a pinch of salt, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil) you like in a jar and shake it up.

I do prefer a mustard that looks like this rather than one that's bright yellow:

I used the same seasoning mix as I used for the roasted chickpeas because I didn't want the flavors to compete. I also made this right after I stuck the chickpeas in the oven so it would have time to dissolve the sugar and salt and rehydrate some of the herbs.

Assemble the salad in a bowl. Butter lettuce is my preference. I like equal parts chickpeas and beets and as much blue cheese as I can get in there. A light drizzle of dressing and BAM! It's eating time.

For me this is an entree salad, but if you're a meat lover some grilled steak would be delicious on this or next to it. Blue cheese and beets just beg for a beef accompaniment. Unless you don't eat beef, then they need nothing.

Salad!

It feels like spring out here in North Carolina (Have I ever told you how much I love NC? I love NC.) and spring weather means that I want fresh fruits and veggies.

Food like salad.

This is a salad introduced to me by my dear, sweet friend, Missy. We met at massage school. She is a mother in every form and desires nothing less than to feed every person she comes across. I love it!

First things first, grab a jar and shake up the dressing.

Of course, I don't usually measure. I just eyeball it and adjust according to what I like (lots of vinegar, not so much oil) and you should try that too. That's all that salad dressing is. Just a little fiddling around with some ingredients to spice up your lettuce!

Salt

Pepper

Sugar-I actually use half the amount of sugar in the original recipe. I'll let you know why here in a bit.

Apple cider vinegar-I double or triple the quantity in the recipe. I love vinegar.

Oil-I was trying my best to stay true to the recipe for you...I like it better with about 2 Tablespoons of oil rather than the 1/4 cup.

Juice-I use 2-3 tablespoons of the juice from my mandarin oranges to replace some of the sugar and to add more liquid in lieu of the oil.

Hawt Sauce-I like Frank's. I put that *beep* on everything. Please tell me you know their ads. They crack me up.

Parsley-Fresh is best. Second best would be a good quality dried herb. For those of us who keep trying to be cheap, the $1 Kroger Italian Seasoning is not up to par. It kinda tastes like dirt.

I forgot to take a picture.

There you have it. Salad dressing.

Oh yeah. Shake it.

I make the dressing first so the flavors have some time to incorporate and become friends. ( :

Next up is sugared almonds!
YUMMY!

I double this because I'm in salad for the crunchy stuff. It's true. Extra croutons, more nuts, lots of tortilla strips--give me the crunch!

Two ingredients this time: sliced almonds+sugar

Pop those babies in your pan and get ready to stir. Here, I recommend stirring constantly. Mostly because one time I neglected to do this and decided to chop something else up and I ended up with a blackened pan of carbon. Not tasty.

Medium heat, after two minutes:

Three and a half minutes:

Four minutes, done!

The sugar has melted, gotten slightly caramel in color and is sticking to the almonds. I pour it out on a sheet of waxed paper to let them cool. 

The only other prep to do is to dice some celery and grate some onion. I don't like raw onion, so I omit that, but it's not horrible. [Especially if you actually like onion.]

 

Lettuce-Butter lettuce is best, but Whole Foods was out, so I used this other stuff that wasn't nearly as good.

Celery

Mandarin oranges

Almonds

Dressing

Toss that baby and enjoy! Revel in the evening light-thank you daylight savings time!! I love this salad! Of course if you're my mother you will turn your nose up at the fact that I put fruit in my salad.

I don't know where I come from either. ( :

Here's the original recipe from Missy:

Mandarin Salad
Dressing

• 1/2 tsp Salt
• dash of Pepper
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/4 cup Salad Oil
• dash of Red Pepper Sauce
• 1 Tbsp Parsley

Shake dressing ingredients in tightly covered jar.

Salad

• 1/4 cup sliced Almonds
• 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 cup Celery, finely diced
• 1/4-1/2 small Onion, grated
• 1 can Mandarin Oranges, drained
• 1-2 bags Butter lettuce 

Cook almonds over low heat adding sugar and stirring constantly until sugar is melted. Cool and break apart. Toss all ingredients together with dressing in a large bowl topping with almonds.