Sunday, September 5, 2010

Day 202- Chickpeas!

If ever there were a perfect, totally magic, versatile veggie food, it'd be chickpeas. Problem is, most people in the US are introduced to them wrong. I know I was.

The first place I ever encountered chickpeas, or garbanzo beans (a much cooler name), was the salad bar at my elementary school--kinda a scary place to begin with. They were just dumped out of a can into the serving bowl. They looked like little brown brains and tasted like chalk-y cardboard. Little kids don't think about mooshing them up and adding stuff to them to make them edible, they just look at them, say "eewww, mini brains," and never touch them again.

But if made into curry, or falafel, or fake egg salad, or even hummus (without tahini, chalky blech) they are *soooo* good. Like, so good I could probably come up with a different way to eat them just about every day, and it'd take months to get bored. Total magic food.

So yesterday I *finally* cooked the chickpeas. I tossed the whole pound in the slow cooker and wandered off for a couple hours. Or, you know, like 6- What, I lost track of time. It happens. So then I made chana masala (~3C of beans worth) and rice, and nommed half of it. It's probably technically more than 2 servings worth, and it was a struggle for me to eat it *all* in one big meal, but it was yummy. And it finally finished off that damned bag of forking rice I bought back in, I think, February.

Today I'll finish that and make falafel. Ok, today I'll *try* to make falafel.

4 comments:

  1. I am finally down to my last serving of falafel. I froze 6 servings a couple months ago, had the unfrozen 6 for lunches, and have finally cracked into the second half. The flatbread (uncooked) froze really well, too. And now I am sad. I do still have a lb of dried chickpeas in the closet, they were going to become hummus, but I may need more falafel.

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  2. I was hoping I'd have enough chickpeas left after the curry to make falafel *and* hummus (they go so well together) but it was not to be. So I'll just have to do something else! Maybe I'll just do hummus... I'll decide later.

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  3. Ha, I was never (still havent been) properly introduced to chickpeas correctly... only way I've seen them is as unpleasant little round slimy things in a cold bowl that's been sitting in the employee cafeteria for hours. Yum. (Not). Though I like hummus (when it has ANY sort of non-chalky cardboard taste). Which so far, has been about once out of the last nine tries.

    I do know I need to get really acquaintanced with it (same with oatmeal), but meh. They just don't have a loving, or even decent place as far as my memory lane is concerned.

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