March 26th: berry smoothie, roasted chickpeas and pistachios

Mmm, Saturday is the best day for making snack foods! For a Saturday morning snack, I made a fruit smoothie for Olivia and I. It took less than 2 minutes for her to spill the bright pink drink all over her white shirt.

It seems most smoothie recipes call for a banana, which I appear to be allergic to, so I am always excited when I find a good non-banana smoothie recipe. I've tried many that were not good. This one is good. The recipe comes from a cookbook we were given as a wedding present many a year ago, The Newlyweds' Cookbook.

Very Berry Smoothie

1 cup strawberries, hulled
1 cup raspberries
1/2 cup blueberries
3/4 cup cranberry juice
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp honey*
4 large ice cubes

Put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and process until almost smooth. Taste for sweetness, adding more honey, if needed. Pour into two chilled glasses and serve immediately.

Serves 2.

*The recipe calls for 1 tsp. I used 1 tbsp.

The last time her shirt was seen in its original white condition.

For a Saturday night snack for me and Greg, I tried a new variation on roasted chickpeas. I like this version even better than the last one I tried out. This one comes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, although I tweaked it a bit.

Roasted Chickpeas and Pistachios

4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup shelled pistachios
1 tbsp minced garlic
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 400°F. Put 3 tbsps oil in a large ovenproof skillet large enough to hold the chickpeas and pistachios in one layer and put on the stove over medium heat. When hot, add the chickpeas, pistachios and garlic and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Stir quickly so that everything is well coated with oil and sitting in one layer.

Transfer the skillet to the oven and roast, stirring occcasionally, until the chickpeas begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, add last 1 tbsp oil, a good squeeze of lemon juice, and more salt and pepper, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in the refrigerator.

Serves 2 as a great snack for movie-watching! That's what we did. But we're lame and fell asleep watching the movie, which was some Woody Allen movie, I don't even know which one. I am so old.

The cookbook suggests topping the hot chickpeas with curry powder or chili powder rather than lemon juice. I think that sounds good too, but haven't tried them out.

February 22nd: Quinoa & Squash (and chickpea) Salad

Day 2 of veggie salad make at home deliciousness experiment. Tonight's salad was inspired by one purchased last week at Cuisine & Passion, a local take out place with awesome food. The recipe came from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I made it as per the book for supper, then added some chickpeas to the leftovers, for the lunch version. Not that we're going full-on vegetarian, so it is probably less important for us, but quinoa is one of the few foods that contains complete protein. Other than quinoa and soybeans (superfoods on their own), beans and grains combined create complete protein, meaning, "the two contain complementary types of amino acids that cannot be produced by our bodies." (HtCEV). If you don't eat meat or animal foods like eggs and cheese, this is pretty much the only way you can get it. That's it for the lesson; now for the recipe:

Quinoa & Squash Salad

1 cup quinoa, cooked according to package directions (20-30 minutes)
1 small butternut squash*, peeled, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces and gently boiled until tender, 10-15 minutes
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely diced red onion or shallot
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsps balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley or chives


In a large bowl, gently toss together the quinoa, squash, pepper, onion and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk the vinegar and oil together and add half to bowl. Toss and add more dressing to taste. Garnish with parsley.

*I used squash. The original recipe calls for one large or two small sweet potatoes.

For the lunch version, I threw in some cooked and cooled chickpeas. No idea how many. Till I thought it looked like a good amount. Très helpful, no?

February 1st: Baked Goat Cheese and Apple Salad, Crunchy Roasted Chickpeas

Vegetarian main: from February 2011's Chatelaine: Baked Goat Cheese and Apple Salad. This was good, but not quite as good as I had been expecting. I love goat cheese, and coating it in almonds then baking it was genius; I'll definitely do that part again. The rest of the salad was just good, not great. Be gone, ye.

Rather than using a can of chickpeas, I used dried, soaked for a day then boiled for an hour and refrigerated until tonight. I've decided dried is definitely the way to go with beans; it takes a bit more foresight, but so much cheaper and really not at all hard. I made one modification to the recipe; instead of using the cooked chickpeas as they were, I baked them as per Cooking With My Kid's Crunchy Roasted Chickpeas. I thought the crunchy texture might be a welcome contrast to the salad. As it turns out, I preferred the squishy variety, though both were okay.

Olivia and I seem to have experienced taste bud conversion. We both enjoyed the chickpeas immensely tonight. I've never liked them before, and as I was telling Olivia, when I tried feeding them to her when she was a baby, she spit them out. She thought that was pretty funny, and gamely ate them up as I told her this story. Greg, however, has taste buds stuck in the past; he's still not into them. We'll work on that.

Even if she didn't eat chickpeas, she was a good eater.

Okay, confession: I LOVE junk food. Chocolate, cookies, cake, ice cream, candy, popcorn and especially, more than anything else, chips. I am always looking for a replacement snack for chips, something salty and crunchy, that goes well with a glass of lemon and Perrier. I have yet to find something that satisfies the craving. However, these crunchy chickpeas were pretty good. If nothing else, as I sit here typing away on the laptop, eating them, they are way, WAY more filling than chips, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't eat anything else right now. Final note: I prefer the way they taste after 20 minutes in the oven, rather than the full 40 recommended in the recipe.