Tinned Tomatoes' Chickpea & Tomato Salad

Upon getting back from a weekend in Portland, I opened up one of the crisper drawers in the fridge to reveal two avocados languishing in the bottom. I got those for a specific recipe, now what was it? . . . oh yeah, one of my favorite lunchtime staples: the Chickpea & Tomato Salad from Holler's Tinned Tomatoes blog! I love this simple, crunchy salad. So will you.

[Oh, I should forewarn that I'm not going to be printing actual recipes much on this site. I encourage folks to use the recipes from the original sites that I link to instead. There are so many good food blogs out there and I think exploration is fun!]

I cut up the cucumber, cilantro, and red onion, and added it to the two cans of chickpeas and the can of diced tomatoes I'd already plopped in the bowl. Yep, I used canned tomatoes for this--in short, I didn't have any fresh tomatoes on hand and refused to be set back by it. I also added a red pepper that was getting all wrinkly and lonely. Into this bowlful of goodness go the avocados!


Here t'is, all mixed up next to the recipe on my laptop.


Colin usually watches me cook while sitting on the counter behind me. It's pretty dang cute even though HE'S A VERY BAD CAT THAT IS NOT ALLOWED ON THE COUNTER, NOT EVER.


Here's my deviation from this recipe. I'm not proud of it because it is a deviation born of laziness. I use store-bought dressing for this salad. The first time I ever made it, I didn't have any honey and saw this dressing sitting unopened in the cupboard. I pulled it out, mulled it over, and decided to go for it. It was a stroke of sheer genius on my part; this dressing was made for this salad. I'm sure any brand of sweet-ish poppyseed dressing will do.


Add a few squirts in and voila! A fantastic summertime salad, perfect for my take-to-work lunches in my Mr. Bento lunchbox. What, you are not familiar with Mr. Bento or bento lunch boxes? There's a whole new world out there for you, my friend. I highly recommend them, especially if you are interested in portion control. Here's what the Mr. Bento looks like:


So this salad will fill one container. What about the rest? I ended up putting homemade mushroom soup in the largest one, a cut up apricot in the third, and cut up mozzarella and radishes in the fourth. I know, that's weird, but you have to get creative sometimes to fill them all up. One of the ideas with the bento is to fix a variety of foods, so your palate doesn't get bored and you get different nutrients, etc.


Until next time!