Recently I was grocery shopping on a Thursday night after a particularly long workday and just didn’t feel like cooking. I picked up my made-to-order deli sandwich and the free can of soda you get if you buy a sandwich on a weekday.

I wanted something to eat alongside my turkey on seven-grain but a trip to the premade salad bar was especially disheartening. Salads that sounded good by description – couscous with wheatberries and cranberries, chickpeas with chopped peppers and olive oil, asian carrot salad – all looked drab and soggy in their little plastic containers.

I abandoned the idea of a salad, bought cookies instead, and set out to recreate my own chickpea salad. I had some of the ingredients on hand but not all of them.

If you want to know more about chickpeas – way more than I could ever tell you, then visit Lydia Walshin’s blog The Perfect Pantry.

After I met Lydia at BlogHer Boston ’08 in the fall she was crazy kind enough to adopt my blog through Kristen’s Adopt-a-Blogger event. Lydia is a food writer, cookbook author, and cooking instructor who runs a non-profit organization, Drop In & Decorate. When she isn’t doing all of that, she’s creating great recipes with the ingredients she has on hand in her pantry.

I keep a pretty well-stocked kitchen, with your basic spice rack and a few olive oils. I keep dried pastas and cans of beans. I shop once or twice a few times each week for fresh produce. Even with a weekly trip to the grocery store, I usually find that when I want to make a dish or bake something, I’m missing one or two of the ingredients.

As was the case with this chickpea salad. As luck would have it, I had everything on hand that I needed to make this salad – except for a can of chickpeas. And now, you see where my grocery shopping problems arise.

Deli-Style Chickpea Salad

What You Need:

1 15 oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/2 medium-sized red onion, finely diced
1/2 red bell pepper, finely diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, finely diced
2 Tbsp. fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/8 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

How-To:

1. In a medium-sized bowl, combine chickpeas with onion and chopped bell peppers.

2. In another bowl, whisk lemon juice and olive oil. Add to chickpea mixture and toss to combine until veggies are thoroughly coated. Add parsley and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Let chill for 2-3 hours before serving. Keeps in an airtight container for 3-5 days. (Yields approximately 6 1/3-cup servings)

IWhat are the must-have items in your pantry?

Tagged as: chickpea salad, deli salad, vegetable chickpea salad