This recipe was born from two very different dining experiences, in two very different places.
Last year my husband and I were in Las Vegas, celebrating a friend's 50th birthday with three other couples. The guys were out doing manly things (car racing) while us ladies hung out by the pool. We ventured inside to grab some lunch and I had the most incredible arugula and quinoa salad, with slices of sundried tomatoes. I thought about that salad incessantly for months after and tried to recreate the dressing, without huge success.
I have to confess: I can't get enough chickpeas lately. I've been incorporating them into everything. God bless the chickpea. That amazing little legume is packed with protein, iron, and fibre, and when roasted, it makes an amazingly addictive, crunchy, salty snack. Roasted chickpeas must be skyrocketing in popularity, since I keep seeing bags of them on sale at the grocery store for what seems to me to be exhoribitant prices.
Have you heard about aquafaba? Aquafaba is the sludgy liquid that you drain out of a can of chickpeas before using them. Aquafaba is the slime you rinse down the sink before you make hummus. Aquafaba is also - get this - an amazing substitute for egg whites when whipped.
Telling someone that you are a vegetarian guarantees that you will be asked the following questions: a) Do you eat fish? and b) How do you get enough protein? If you're like me, you field the second question with a ribald joke of an answer that will make everyone around you blush awkwardly and be forever unable to look your husband in the eye.
It seems whenever I turn on the news these days, the first story is about the frigidly cold weather, followed by advice on staying warm. When the wind chill factor dips below minus thirty, there is not much that can tempt me to leave the warmth of my house, even if the fridge is almost empty and the cupboards are nearly bare.
