CTTVCC: Cuke-Chick Salad

This salad recipe is listed on page 101. This is another simple, delicious recipe, but this one is particularly refreshing. It's low in fat, so it doesn't weigh you down or make you feel uncomfortably full. It's very flavorful because you can taste the individual ingredients' flavors. This is the type of food I would want to eat at a meal right after a workout, or on a school day when I've put off all the homework for my afternoon classes, and am then trying to rush through it during my lunch break, while still attempting to make good grades.

The recipe calls for:

• 2 cucumbers, sliced
• 1/2 (15 ounce) can chickpeas
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 cup distilled vinegar
• salt and pepper, to taste

I used cucumbers, chickpeas, onion powder, salt, and pepper from Earth Fare. I chopped the cucumber slices in half  so that they were little crescents that were closer to bite sized because the cucumber was a bit chubby.

I only had balsamic vinegar, which was Newman's Own Organics. I figure that it probably didn't alter the taste too much. I mixed the onion powder, salt, and pepper into the vinegar before pouring it on the chickpeas and cucumbers, that way it would have all mixed evenly to that I didn't have all of the onion powder on one half and all the salt and pepper on the other half and get seasoning whiplash. Or all of the seasonings could have ended up on one half and then the other half would have just been super-boring. (Really though, I could just eat the cucumbers and chickpeas plain. I think chickpeas have a very nice flavor even just on their own.)

Here is my (mostly uneaten) salad:

It's kind of hard to see the vinegar, but trust me, it's there on the bottom.

Like I was saying, this is an easy crisp salad that could be used as an appetizer or snack, or it could be paired with some sort of light soup, such as a tomato or bean soup. When I make this again, I will cut down the vinegar a tiny bit, because I don't really like having the puddle of liquid at the bottom of my salad. I always feel like I'm wasting food when I have such puddles because I'm not going to drink the vinegar or something. That sounds very undelicious. As it is, I just used the leftovers as the dressing on another salad, but the downside to that is that then there's an extra thing taking up space in the refrigerator until I use it. This is very yummy though, and perfectly uncomplicated, just like I wish all my interactions with other humans would be. Maybe they should have named it "I think my boyfriend still has feelings for his ex" salad, or "my BFF is being a diva" salad, or "I think my BFF has a crush on my boyfriend" salad, or "I think my guy-friend wants to BE my boyfriend" salad, or "one of my groups of friends hates my other group of friends" salad, or, hey, even "my friends all hate my boyfriend" salad. (Guys, replace 'boyfriend' with 'girlfriend'.) Whatever. Enjoy!