Roasted Cinnamon Chickpeas

I travel a lot for business, and that often involves long flights. Because I haven’t found an airline offering unprocessed vegan food, this means I have to bring my own. One of my favorite go-to travel foods (other than my tried-and-true Black and Blue bars) is a bag of crisp roasted chickpeas. 

Roasted chickpeas are an amazingly versatile snack that can be flavored any number of ways. I will often toss them in a simple mixture of lime juice and chili powder. Since I love the combination of tahinni and cinnamon on toast, I thought it might work well on chickpeas too.

This version is a bit higher in fat than my usual variations because of the tahini, so they should be considered somewhat of a treat, but what a healthy one. Consider the advantages:

• Chickpeas are a great portable source of protein and fiber
• Tahini is a healthy fat and contributes healthy minerals
• Cinnamon is excellent for battling insulin resistance

If you squint your eyes and imagine really hard, they taste just a little like graham crackers. Whatever it is that they taste like, my son liked them so much that I had to hide them from him so that I’d have enough for my flight.

Roasted Cinnamon Chickpeas

3 cups chickpeas, cooked or canned
2 Tbsp Tahini
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp agave (optional)

Drain and rinse chickpeas. Blot dry with paper towels. Place on roasting pan (they aren’t very prone to sticking, but I put them on a silicone baking mat or parchment paper just in case). Roast chickpeas at 350 until crispy, about 1-1.5 hours. You have to watch them, because there can be a very wide range in cooking times, depending upon the moisture level in your chickpeas. As soon as they come out of the oven, mix remaining ingredients in large bowl to form a paste. Stir in chickpeas to coat. Set aside to cool.

Store in a sealed container. I wish I could tell you how long they keep, but I’ve never been able to keep a batch around for more than a couple of days.

Black Beans in Mango Lime Sauce

Mangos are in season right now - and even though I know they aren’t exactly locally grown - I couldn’t resist grabbing a flat of them at Costco the other day. Ever since, I’ve been looking for excuses to use them. This recipe is my favorite so far.

Some time, some where, I had a black bean mango dish I really liked. When I went searching for a similar recipe, the best looking one I found was from the Moosewood cookbook series. I had the pleasure of eating in the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York while on a business trip last year, so I knew this recipe would have potential.

Already vegan, this recipe was a snap to adapt to the Eat to Live guidelines. All I had to do was drop the salt and oil originally called for. We didn’t miss them at all. I made a few other minor changes to adjust to our taste (more garlic!) and to account for ingredients on hand (no jalapeno!).

This dish goes together quickly, so it deserves a place in the weekday rotation - at least as long as the mangos last. We served with quinoa and beet greens from today’s CSA box. Perfect!

Serves 6

2 c. red onion, minced, divided
1 1/2 Tbsp. garlic, minced
1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/8 tsp dried red chile flakes
6 c. cooked black beans
6 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
2 large ripe mangos, the riper the better
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
fresh chopped cilantro, to taste

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. When hot, add 1 3/4 c. red onions to pan with garlic, ginger, cumin, and chili flakes. Add a few drops of water as necessary to keep them from sticking. Water-saute for 5 minutes or until onion is softened. Turn down the heat to medium-low. Add beans and 3 Tbsp of lime juice to the pan. Stir until beans are heated through, about another 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in remaining lime juice, about 2/3 of the mango and fresh ground pepper. Let the finished dish sit covered for 15 minutes to allow the sauce to develop.*

Serve garnished with the reserved red onions, reserved mango and cilantro.

*We were impatient and skipped that part, but it was still great. Speaking of impatience, the finished dish was much prettier with the reserved garnishes on top, but it was so good that we ate the garnished versions before I remembered to photograph them!

Beans in a Smoothie?

You bet! At first glance it may seem a little strange, but if you think about it a little bit, it isn’t all that different than using soy milk. With commercial soy milk, someone else has already pulverized the beans for you and taken out the fiber. This way, you get to keep the fiber and lose the additives, like carageenan, in most soy milk.

I put maybe half a cup of cooked black beans with a little water in a large smoothie and can’t taste a thing. Try it as a way to boost the fiber and protein content of your smoothies.

White Bean Chile Hummus

I had just made a big batch of navy beans and felt like making a twist on our usual and ever-present hummus. I found just what I was looking for in Robin Robertson’s excellent cookbok, Carb Conscious Vegetarian: 150 Delicious Recipes for a Healthy Lifestyle. I’ve adapted Robin’s recipe somewhat to account for the fact that my husband won’t eat olives and that the amount of tahini originally called for was too much fat for our tastes. The result was very tasty and great as a dip for veggies. I bet you could thin it to make a great salad dressing too.

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Low-Fat Vegan Lentil Cauliflower Curry

I had some cauliflower to use and was craving a nice curry on this chilly evening. Out of the blue, I remembered an old favorite recipe that I haven’t made since my grad school days. I dug up the original recipe in my tattered and much stained copy of Marilyn Burro’s TWENTY-MINUTE MENUS : TIME-WISE RECIPES & STRATEGIC PLANS FOR FRESHLY COOKED MEALS EVERY DAY. I made a few tweaks to the original recipe to create a version that is lower in fat and vegan. Perfect! Exactly what I was looking for and it really hit the spot. The spice mix gives it lots of flavor.

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