Thursday lunch (with chickpea recipe for any fellow chickpea novices!)

Yum. I am a total garbanzo bean convert. I think my mother fed us canned chickpeas when I was young, which I hated, and I had never realized it was the canned version I hated and not all chickpeas. Here is how I made mine yesterday:

Simple Chickpeas
1. Soak your chickpeas in lots of water. If you add a spoonful of baking soda and stir it in, it will reduce your cooking time, though apparently it does remove B vitamins. I left mine to soak in the morning when I left for work.
2. Pour out the soaking water and rinse the chickpeas a bit. Put them in a saucepan with some vegetable broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or so (longer if no baking soda is used).
3. Drain the chickpeas and stir in a generous spoonful of olive oil and some salt and fresh ground pepper. Serve hot! Amazingly yummy. You could also leave in the broth and puree some bits of it to make a yummy soup, or puree the chickpeas themselves to get fresh hummus. So many options!