CHiCKPeaS ...

I am a huge fan of chickpeas.  They are very healthy ... and yummy to eat.  Chickpeas are the main ingredient in a lot of greek foods, like hummus.  I enjoy baking them in the oven and snacking on them (or frying them in the pan with a little oil and a lot of seasoning), putting them on top of salads or incorporating them into other dishes.  When I got to San Antonio, it was one of the first things I bought at the grocery store.  I am one of those people that insist on buying my beans dried and boiling them myself - then I know what's been added to it - but you can always purchase canned ones, just remember to rinse them before you use them.

This particular day I was really wanting to do something interesting with them - especially since my mother had told me the only way she had really tried them was in hummus or occasionally on a salad and she wasn't really thrilled with them.  I decided to add them to sauteed bell peppers and onions and then incorporate some DreamFields pasta into the mix.

I am not a big fan of a lot of pastas and rice because of the way that they make me feel after I am done eating them.  And I have noticed that since I became a vegetarian, those products (as well as bread and other high carbohydrate foods) make me feel even worse than I did before.  I believe in eating things in moderation and have shopped around for lower carb brands of certain products.  (The tip I have learned:  ONLY make the amount that you are going to use for the meal you are making.  That way you don't go back and get seconds and feel ... well ... blah after eating too much of it.)  DreamFields is a product that I have found that I really do enjoy.  It has good flavor and has only 5 grams of digestible carbs per serving, so it doesn't raise my blood sugar levels and makes me feel full longer.  Check it out.  (Dreamfieldsfoods.com)

I cut the bell peppers and onions into thin slices and then sauteed them in a pan that was sprayed with some olive oil cooking spray.  After a few minutes, I added 2 teaspoons of butter to the pan ... to give it that butter taste I so enjoy my sauteed onions to have.  (I don't use a lot of butter or oil in my cooking.)  I then added 1/2 cup of chickpeas to the pan (ones that I had boiled earlier in the day).  After about five minutes, I added a chili & lime spice blend, granulated garlic and fresh cracked black pepper - stirred it a few more times and then removed it from the heat.  I then took 2 servings of the pasta (I was making this for both my mother and myself) and mixed it into the pan with the vegetable/chickpea mixture.  After adding just a little bit of sea salt, it was ready to serve. 

This dish ended up being enough for both of us to have some for dinner and the rest for lunch the next day.  And I have made my mother a fan of chickpeas.