Salad for the Blue Collar Man

Although my husband has no interest in going vegan, he is committed to a healthier diet. He used to make 4 deli meat and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and snack every morning before going to work. Last year he started making soups and now packs them along with one less sandwich. lately, he has been packing salads too, further reducing his meat and cheese intake. I volunteered to make him a couple of salads to go, after he complained of getting bored with his. I love salads with crunchy carbohydrates and rich texture. Here they are....

Oriental Salad

salad leaves

carrots (chopped or grated)

grape tomatoes

green onions (chopped)

Ramen noodles, uncooked

dried banana chips

sesame sticks (a kind of snack made with wheat)

Sesame Vinaigrette

1/2 cup light vinegar

4 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup salad oil

2 tablespoons sesame seed oil

1 teaspoon pepper

If you're packing this to go, you must separate the vegetables, crunchy toppings, and the dressing in their own containers. This salad is a variation of the Nappa Salad posted on 3/6/11. Assemble your favorite salad leaves and veggies. Chop Ramen noodles, banana chips and sesame sticks (I buy them at Trader Joes). Add crunchy mix on top. Shake and pour on dressing. Yummy!

Power Salad

salad veggies

brown rice

vegetable stock

chopped apple

garbanzo/chick peas

pecan nuts

toasted flax seeds

1tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

Make brown rice according to directions ahead of time. I substitute 1/2 the water with vegetable stock (store bought) to add flavor. Any left over rice or noodles should work just as well here. Assemble salad leaves and veggies the way you like them. Open a can of garbanzo beans, and drain. Chop pecans and apple. I found a toasted flax seed at Trader Joes that has a wonderful flavor. I bet if you took the time to candy these pecans, you could add another layer of complexity to this super salad. Mix up the oil and vinegar and your prep work is done. The only question is do you eat it in or take it out?

Protein or Carb?

Oh garbanzo bean, you little chick pea, I tire of you. Every Monday, chick peas. So, today and then one more, to end the Month of November you will be the headline. And then it will be December Mondays and they will be SALSA Mondays. EEEYEEEIIIIEEEYYYIII. But today my little chick pea, it's you. Then one more time, it's you and then adieu. You have been given your notice.

Wednesday is my vegan day, so I don't have to make chick peas the main course on Monday. My main course tonight was wild caught sword fish. Yum. And my side dish was a chick pea salad.

When I was cooking for the Elders, they would sometimes ask, "What do you call this?" and I would say, "Monday surprise." The Elder would scold me. "This is really good, how will you ever make it again? Did you write it down? One day you are going to hit on something fantastic and you won't be able to make it again." Right. That's OK with me.

What is ever exactly the same the second time? Take for instance the story my third (or fourth) cousin would tell. They would come to visit my parents once a year in the summer. Summer in the mid-north can be splendid or a heavy, muggy hot. One especially hot day the cousins hit the road to visit my parents. They didn't have air conditioning in their car. At the half way mark they stopped at a little hamburger stand and had a lemonade. "The BEST lemonade I've ever had." they agreed. The next year they came to visit my parents, they anticipated the stop at the hamburger stand for a repeat performance by lemonade. "It just wasn't that special." You tell me. Was it the hot day that made the lemonade delicious the first time? Was it a new lemonade mix the second year? Was it a different lemonade chef? Or did they maybe have a new car with airconditioning that second year? Can it ever be the same?

Tonight I fixed a garbanzo bean salad. It was a 15 oz can of garbanzo beans and the ingredients I found in my pantry that I thought would compliment the beans. Celery, chopped; a leak, chopped; cilantro leaves chopped; Clementine orange sections; green apple, chopped; oil and vinegar dressing; salt and pepper. I stirred it all together and put it on a bed of lettuce.

So was it the carbohydrate or the protein in my meal? The fish was the protein. Did I over-protein? I do try to think this through when I plan even the most impromptu meal. On the garbanzo bean can it says one serving is 21g of carbohydrate and 7g of protein. With the added fruit and vegetables, it was the carbohydrate. Settled. A carbohydrate with a little protein bonus. It was good, but not award winning.

I know that I'm getting a little flip with the chick pea. Time to move on. Next week, for the grand finale, I want to give the garbanzo bean flour a turn in the spot light. And then, Monday will transform itself and get spicy and sassy and very loud. I salivate thinking of it.

Bean Burgers

Another Monday, another Chick Pea. I'm going to start calling her Versatile.

I went to the food network today to find a Bean Burger. I've had vegetable burgers before, but folks - this one ROCKS.

The recipe is courtesy of Rachel Gitlin and she calls it Garbanzo Bean Burger. She recommends that you accompany it with a Tehina Onion Sauce, it's probably good, but I didn't get to that today. Maybe next time.

1 tbls vegetable oil. I'm stopping right there because there has been quite a discussion around the house about vegetable oils. "Olive oil heated to a certain temperature changes it's advantage to us and should not be used for frying," says One. "Canola oil is a Canadian product made from genetically modified rapeseed and was originally used as a motor oil," says Two. We don't know what to think. So to keep the heat down in the discussion, I fried my burgers in Expeller Pressed Safflower oil.

1/2 cup diced onions
1/2 cup carrots, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup walnuts
1 15.5 oz can of garbanzo beans, drained (1.5 cups)
5 tbls gluten flour
hold it again - no gluten for me, so I substituted 5 tbls of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour and 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

Heat the oil in a frying pan and saute the onions, carrots, garlic, cumin, celery seed, and salt over medium heat until the onions are transparent. In a food processor (or blender), chop the nuts until 1/2 are a coarse meal and the other half are just chopped. Dump them into a large bowl. Add the sauteed vegetables.
Put the garbanzo beans into the food processor (or blender) and chop until 1/2 of the beans are pulverized and the other half are quartered.
Add flour, arrowroot powder, beans and parsley to the bowl of nuts and veggies.
Mix everything together with your hands until the mixture has enough body to form a patty. You may want to add a little water to help the mixture bind. I didn't find this necessary. It's really a pretty mixture.

Form the mixture into 4 burgers. I recommend that you make flat-ish burgers, so the surface gets crunchy and the center is hot and not too soft.
Fry over medium heat for 3-4 minutes on each side.

These are the BEST vegan burgers I've ever had. And on thanksgiving, I will make them again, form them into little patties, and serve them as hors d'oeuvres on little rice crackers with a little slice of red pimento on top for color. Fancy.

Better than........

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Up at dawn and out the door to join 350 – 400 people and participate in a 5K to benefit a local environmental issue. Families, athletes, environmentalist, competitors and non-competitors ran and walked together on a beautiful clear, cool morning. A silent auction, a raffle, speeches, awards and refreshments followed. Better than the gym. Better than church.

On to the Farmer’s Market in Ojai, CA. If you’ve been to Ojai you know that it’s a very artsy town. Quaint and charming and jam packed with artists, healers, authors, poets, stoners, chefs, mystics, actors, theater and wonderful, wonderful. The Farmer’s Market says Organic above most of the vendor tents. I picked up a little bag of fresh Medjool dates. Better than candy.

I sat with the Dutchman for a couple of hours to remind myself what my job will be in two weeks when I run his flower stall for him while he takes a break. The Dutchman’s regulars call him by name. He knows the flowers they prefer. He holds back 3 bunches of Asiatic Lilies for a 70+ woman so they’ll be there when she comes by. This one’s husband is sick. That one is in the garden club. The Union Man has been unemployed for 7 months and is now 110th in line for a union job, up from 236. It will easily be another 4 months before he has a job. I ate a tamale; the Dutchman had something he brought from home. Two hours with the Dutchman in his flower stall - better than a movie.





The NY Times Health and Nutrition column has lots of chickpea recipes. I fixed
Eggplant, Tomato and Chickpea Casserole. One correction, in the list of ingredients, they left out the sprig of basil you put in the tomato sauce while it’s cooking. Then you discard it before you layer the casserole. The final instruction is, “sprinkle with parsley before serving.” Hold that thought.

Puree of Chickpea Soup is simple enough. The last line, “Serve, garnishing each bowl with a few drops of olive oil or lemon juice if desired and a sprinkle of chopped fresh mint.”

Hello Herbs. Goodbye cheese.

Don’t garnish for your folks, let them garnish their own. Everyone loves it. They’ll be timid at first, but they will grow to love it. Show them how it's done.

On the table, a pretty carafe of EVOO, a couple of lemons cut in wedges, in a pretty bowl and a few little dishes of chopped fresh herbs. Parsley and basil for the casserole, Mint and cilantro for the soup. Or suit yourself and provide sweet marjoram, rosemary, chives, dill. Go WILD.

Of course you’ll have a salad. So throw those same herbs into the salad right before you bring it to the table and toss it there. Complementary flavors, aren't you fancy?

FRESH HERBS, better than cheese.

I Feel Awful

"I F E E L A W F U L" she said. And then we fell over laughing.

LA and I made Falafil for lunch. We thought we were pretty adventurous at the time. There was a box of Falafil mix, just add water, in my cupboard. We made the little meatball things, deep fried them and put them into pita halves with a dollop of yogurt. We loved them. As we pushed back our chairs and patted our bellies, we said, "I falafil'. It still makes us laugh.

Falafil comes from Lebanon. It's chickpeas, onion, potato, parsley and spices all ground together and formed into little patties and deep fried. You can buy the mix like LA and I did or you can follow one of many recipes. Today, I went to the little fast food Greek restaurant down the street and bought them.

That's a dollop of hummus in the picture. More chick pea. Chick pea on chick pea.

All day I've been like a billiard ball, slamming into ideas and subjects that send me ricocheting off in a completely new direction. Starting at the Library, finding a falafil recipe in a Lebanese cookbook, then learning from the Librarian that Ralph Nader is Lebanese and that his Mother wrote a cookbook titled, "It Happened in the Kitchen". So I asked her to find it in a CA library somewhere and order it for me. I never thought of Ralph Nader having a mother who might guide his eating habits. But it seems she is quite famous in her own right, an activist and civil servant. Her cookbook is as much about her thoughts on child rearing as on food.

Then I got interested in Ralph Nader, found his book about What Happened to the Electric Car. When I asked Netflix about the man, there was a documentary about Ralph Nader.

At the Writer's Almanac the poem is about the vegetarian George Bernard Shaw. It doesn't say outright that he's a vegetarian so I googled GBS and vegetarian and found quotes by him and many other celebrity vegetarians. And there's Paul McCartney. Oh yes, I remember, he's part of the Meatless Monday group.

I remembered an article I read last Friday in the NY Times that made me think hard about vegan vs vegetarian vs omnivore. I pondered the meaning of it all. So many things we don't know. So many forks in the road. Stay loose, I tell myself. Keep searching.

Chick Pea Mon Cheri

The Sizzling Tale of the French Chick Pea. Oui. Oui.

The room overlooked the Mediterranean. The man next to me was H O T. It was early morning and we looked at the azure sky through the open windows and heard the water splashing lightly against the shore. A perfect morning with a special man.

And then the phone rang. I leaped out of bed, stumbled across the hall and into my office, turned on my computer before I even turned on a light. It must be late. What's this? The computer said it was adjusting for daylight savings time. So, I'm not late? So it's only 5:45 am, not 6:45 am? Has not having a TV caused me to be unaware that the country was adjusting the time?

I have 2 laptops on my desk. I went to the 2nd one and googled daylight savings time. I had to laugh. The heading of one of the first search results said, "It's not today." My old computer was thinking (more accurately, not thinking) that the time changed every 4th Sun of Oct. So the time changes next weekend and I was late.

Late on Monday is not a good start. But I was ready for Panisse. I had shopped for garbanzo bean flour last week. It's a simple recipe. So why is it 9pm and the Panisse just went into the refrigerator for a 2 hour cool down? Because.

Today I bought new shoes so I can continue to walk the 5 and 10Ks without killing my feet. And I went to the 4 year olds tap dancing recital. Stuff like that. Enough about that. On to France. Panisse. What does it mean? I don't know. I tried to find out. Peasant maybe. Pants with lace maybe. Or short pants. Make it up. As you gather around to sample your first panisse, you can find a definition.

What's Panisse? It's a chickpea pollenta stick. They look like French Toast fingers, but don't be confused. Panisse is made the way you make pollenta. Pollenta is corn flour and Panisse is garbanzo bean flour. I found many recipes and learned that the measuring isn't too critical. The ingredients are few and a little more or less salt, a little more or less olive oil, isn't going to change the outcome.

Bring one quart of water to a boil.

Add 2 tsp olive oil

Take off the heat.

Whisk into the hot water:

2 1/4 cup sifted garbanzo bean flour and 3/4 tsp salt

Return to medium heat and whisk about 3 minutes.

Switch to a long handled wooden spoon and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly for about 10 minutes, until the dough is thick and holds it's shape.

See those lumps? It looks a little like creamed corn. That's because I didn't take the boiling water off the heat before I poured in the flour. It was too hot. Some of the flour wanted to be a bean again.

Next step. Lightly oil an 8 inch square baking pan. Pour the thick dough into the pan and cool for 2 hours.

After the dough has cooled it will easily dump out onto a cutting board in one big square.

Heat about an inch of oil in a heavy fry pan, just to sizzling. While you are waiting for the heat to come up to temperature, cut the dough into 14 strips one way and then cut those strips into 3 equal lengths. That will give you 42 little panisses.

Carefully slide the panisses into the hot oil one at a time and cook until golden brown, turn with tongs and cook the other side. Take out of the oil and drain on paper towels or a brown paper bag.

Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.

The texture is a little like a french fry. A little crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. Good.
A dream is calling me. Time to see what happens in that little French Mediterranean adventure I was on when the day started.

The snacker and the slacker

It being Monday, it's another episode in the garbazo bean journey. Tonight I dedicate my blog entry to Spencer, a timid, friendly, warm companion. Clumsy, fat, adorable, affectionate, a slacker. Begin the violins.

Spencer would sit in my lap and share a movie and a can of garbanzo beans. Yes, right out of the can, we had no shame. He’s gone now, the dinner of some carnivore in the neighborhood one moonlit night. Spencer was very slow, never could jump off the couch, would stand with 10 toes hanging over the edge of the cushion and look at the floor for 10 minutes before he dared stumble forward and land all goofy on the floor. (He was pure white, his sister I named Hawk, she is all black and with me still. Get it. Spencer and Hawk. Robert Parker.) Spencer, pure white, long hair, slow and stupid was no challenge for a coyote or hawk or owl. I don’t know who got him. (The circle of life.) But he was a slacker and a garbanzo bean snacker. Today in his memory, we will go Greek and make roasted chickpeas.

According to Susanna Hoffman, the author of “The Olive and the Caper”, the ancient Greeks wrote about whole roasted chickpeas shared around a fire. Not a corn nut, but similar in texture, a garbanzo bean snack is an oven away.

Roasted Chickpeas

I tried it two ways. The first batch I took the long way. Soaked a cup of organic Chickpeas overnight, and then cooked them until they were soft. (We have hard water so it takes longer, about 2 hours. Ugh. What does that do to the electric bill?) Then I drained them and let them air-dry while I heated the oven to 350. The instructions say to roast for an hour and thirty minutes. So I poured a little EVOO on a jelly roll pan, dumped on the air-dried peas and shook them around to cover them with EVOO, then slid them into the oven. After 30 minutes I took them out and gave them a little shake and sent them back in for thirty more minutes, took them out, gave them a shake, and left them in for the last 30 minutes. A couple of the peas were very dark, like they were not edible so I picked them out than threw them out. While they were warm, I generously dashed them with salt.

The result was very crunchy. Too crunchy. Too long in the oven. Watch them carefully and find just the right time and you will be fine. They are easy to check, being so small you can pick one out, roll it around in your hand a bit and give it a taste. Mostly you are checking for crunch. Just the right crunch. Somewhere between a jelly bean and a rock. Maybe like a M&M Peanut.

The second batch I took the short cut. I bought a can of organic garbanzo beans, drained them and proceeded as above. This time I was diligent. I checked doneness after 30 minutes when I gave them the first shake. Then every 15 minutes. After 1 hour they were perfect. I love them.
A vegan with food allergies needs snacks.

Hey Chickpea, wink wink

It was all set in my mind. I would make Monday Hummus day for a month or two. I would cleverly begin with something like: "Class, today's spelling word comes from the Arabic word for chickpea or garbanzo bean. It's pronounced 'HUM us'. How do you think it's spelled?" bla bla bla and then the finale, after they have all raised their hands and taken a stab at spelling Hummus I would say, "You are all right. It's spelling is very unstable. You can spell it: hamos, houmous, hommos, hommus, hummos, hummous or humus. That last one, humus would be confusing for many Americans, since we have another word we spell humus and it is pronounced 'HUE mes' and it means decaying vegetable matter."

Alas, at the library I discovered that there is more to a chickpea than hummus. It would be wrong to concentrate on hummus and leave out the history, the stews, the soups and salads. The Chickpea deserves star treatment, after all, it had a prominent role in the 2009 movie "Cold Souls" as the soul of Paul Giamatti. Paul Giamatti playing himself. (I saw that movie one too hot afternoon at my local art theater and I must say, well, I don't know what to say. I like Paul Giamatti, and I do think about this movie once in a while. Was it deeper than I think? Did I miss the punch line? Why would Paul Giamatti agree to do that movie?)

And so, for awhile, Monday at 7 Shades will be chickpea day. Please join me. Participate even.

It all started in the Mediterranean. Which leads to the question, what exactly does that mean?

Every country that borders the Mediterranean Sea qualifies. And our Chickpea is a big player. Look at them all. Now that's diversity. I think we are in for some fun.

Today we are going to Morocco, for Chick-Pea Soup from Martha Rose Shulman's "Mediterranean Light" . Why? Maybe because I read from left to right. And I'm looking at the front row first. I don't know why. I think it's because I have everything in my cupboard to make this soup. No shopping required this time and it is looking like rain.

serves 4-6

2 15.5 oz cans chickpeas with liquid (Cooking chickpeas from dried peas, takes a very long time. Maybe next week.)

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/4 tsp powdered saffron

1/4 tsp ground turmeric

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cumin

1/3 cup grated onion

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 large potato diced

1/4 to 1/2 tsp harissa or cayenne pepper

1 quart water

salt to taste

bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer about 1 hour, partially covered

put 2 cups of the soup in the blender and puree

return to pot and mix well

just before serving stir in:

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup cilantro.

I prefer to put the lemon juice and cilantro on the table and let everyone add their own to taste.

This is the end of the first Chickpea Monday. Coming up will be history and the crop and recipes.