July 26

My market stall neighbours sell healthy snacks. I always think it is funny standing there as they describe their flourless, sugarless treats and I look down at my bagels, filled with (glorious) gluten, white flour and sugar. I am, however, always surprised when we share a customer, but I guess in the end, you can’t argue with tastiness whether it’s a healthy snack or more of a treat. A whole section of their snacks is various flavours of roasted chickpeas. Until they came around, I totally forgot about these little guys, which are in many ways the perfect savoury snack. I used to love making them and sprinkling them over homemade hummus. They are simple, easy to make, customizable, pretty filling, healthy and crunchy. So, last week, I made a batch of slightly spicy, salty chickpeas and threw them in a salad, which turned a simple bowl of tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber into a light, summer meal.



When I was asked to bring a side that was more substantial than a green salad to a BBQ this weekend, my mind went to these chickpeas right away. I’ve also been wanting to make a carrot-centric dish lately, so I started building this salad from there. I love dates in a salad for their chewy texture and their sweetness, feta is always a crowd-pleasure and adds some awesome savoury saltiness and cilantro and cumin give the salad some flavour, beyond what you would normally expect.


In the end, the salad is everything that I thought it would be: salty, savoury, crunchy, sweet. It’s a tangle of bright flavours that marry perfectly together. I always bring something that I’ve blogged to our get togethers because it’s always a great opportunity to try something new and share it with other people, which I rarely get to do. Sometimes it’s nerve wracking because I am not 100% sure how it will turn out since it’s something I have never made before. This time around, there are no nerves. As soon as I took my first bite, I knew it was a total winner.