Chickpea Salad and Oatmeal, Walnut, and Dried Plum Cookies

I made several new things this past weekend. Some tasted great and some not so great. First, we have Friday night's meal. I made the Sesame Asparagus from the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook. This was the dish that was not so great. It tasted really bitter. If I was to ever try this recipe again, (which is doubtful), I would most definitely cut the soy sauce in half and possibly the rice vinegar.

I also used half of my soy chorizo that I bought a few weeks ago. I sauteed some onions, yellow, red, and green bell peppers, then I added in the chorizo and continued cooking it for about 10 more minutes. I could tell by the smell that it was going to be good, and it was.

I cooked some basmati rice and put the chorirzo over it...yum!! I also cooked some fried zucchini and silver queen corn on the cob. Everything was great except for the asparagus. Oh well, I'm sure I'll have more recipes that I won't care for. You never know until you try them though, right?

Saturday, I made a chickpea Salad. When I was in NJ, Jenn bought a carton of chickpea salad, from the local deli, that was out of this world. I knew I had to find a recipe for it when I got home. I found a recipe that sounded really close to what she had bought, but I did make some changes to it. Here's what I ended up with, and to me, it tasted really close to what I had in NJ.

1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/2 small onion finely chopped (I’m not a big fan of red onions, so I used yellow)
1/4 yellow bell pepper, chopped
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
1 celery rib chopped
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste.

Combine chickpeas with onions, peppers, celery, garlic powder, and rosemary in a medium bowl. Stir in the vinegar, oil, salt and pepper.

Sunday night for supper, I had a salad with the chickpea salad on it. I added a few dried cranberries, carrots, and cucumbers to the salad. I topped that off with a red wine vinaigrette, which just made the salad all the more delish!

I mainly fixed the chickpea salad so I could have something different to take for lunch this week. So today, I had a chickpea salad wrap with some added spinach. I am beginning to really love veggie wraps of all kinds. As you see, I left some saran wrap on the bottom half of my wrap...that's because my wraps always fall apart for some strange reason. I also had some falafel chips and cashew cheese. What a yummy lunch!

Sunday afternoon it was raining, so after church we decided to come home and be lazy. After watching a movie, I decided we needed something sweet to eat, so I made Alicia Silverstone's Oatmeal, Walnut, and Dried Plum Cookies. Her recipe called for all purpose unbleached flour, but I used whole wheat pastry this time.. If you have not tried these, you must! They are so good. Here they are cooling after coming out of the oven.

Wait...where did this partially eaten cookie come from? I must have a mouse in the kitchen.

Yep....and this would be the big mouse stealing the warm cookies.

Hope everyone has had a great Monday. :o)

~Peace~