Tag Archives: light lunches

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Chickpea and Tomato Salad with Fresh Basil by Green Lite Bites

25 Mar
A great side dish for your dinner or a light lunch idea.

A great side dish for your dinner or for a light and tasty lunch.

I’ve become addicted to Pinterest.

I’m probably the last person on earth to become addicted because for a long time, even though I knew it was there, I didn’t go on it very often.

I’m on it every day now.

If I’m sitting somewhere waiting, I click on the app on my phone and I just scroll and pin, scroll and pin.

I’ve found many wonderful ideas for many wonderful things, many of which I’ll probably never have the opportunity to try out. But, I’ve pinned them for future reference, just.in.case.

One such pin that I scrolled past actually did come to fruition, and it was a delicious success, so I thought I’d share it with you today for my WFDW post even though it’s not just for dinner.

This recipe for Chickpea and Tomato Salad with Fresh Basil came my way via the Green Lite Bites site, and I appreciate them sharing it because it’s a simple recipe with fresh ingredients, and I will definitely be making it again in the future.

Interestingly enough, on the day I saw this pin on Pinterest, I actually had a can of chick peas sitting on my kitchen counter. I’m not sure who put them there or why, or what the original intention for them was, but they’d been there a while and I’d been thinking of roasting them one afternoon for a snack, since I hadn’t done that in a while.

Additionally, we’d been babysitting my parents’ plants while they were away and one of them was a fresh Basil plant that they’d left us and told us to feel free to use it if we wanted to. So, I had fresh Basil, which I never do, I had chickpeas, which I often don’t, and I had tomatoes, which I always do. I had everything I needed for this recipe.

I also had two cucumbers that needed to be used, so I decided when making this recipe, to add one in as well.

This was going to be on our menu for lunch during the work and school week, so I decided to give my morning a break by making it ahead of time and putting it in the fridge overnight. I also felt that the flavors would have a good amount of time to blend together and everything would be perfectly chilled by morning.

Four out of five of us were having this for our lunches. For two of my daughters, having just this in a bowl was plenty, along with some pita bread cut into triangles on the side. For my husband, we opted to put this salad onto a bed of lettuce, (as I’ve shown here) with the same side of pita bread. There was just enough left for me to have a little bowl on the side with my lunch that day too.

Everyone loved their lunches and it was just enough for everyone’s desired portion sizes. I loved having my morning “off” from making all four lunches from scratch and I loved coming home to my own lunch partially decided for me, and waiting to be eaten. I don’t love lunches to begin with and I hate deciding what to have. This was a nice treat for us all.

The recipe is quick, can be modified to add in or take out ingredients based on your own tastes and what you have on hand. You could throw in some fresh mozzarella cheese balls (although that would make it a little less healthy if you did) and it’d be just as delicious.

Here is the recipe just as it’s shown on the Green Lite Bites site. I hope you’ll pay her site a visit, as there’s lots of other healthy options to try!

CHICKPEA AND TOMATO SALAD WITH FRESH BASIL

  • 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • About 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
  • 25 large basil leaves, chopped
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tsp olive oil
  • 1/2 tbsp honey (10g)
  • pinch of salt

Toss all ingredients together and chill for at least 20 minutes, allowing all the flavors to merge.

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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Light lunches

4 Feb
A perfect light lunch for those days you just can't eat another sandwich.

A perfect light lunch for those days you just can’t eat another sandwich.

Ever have that feeling where you wake up in the morning, still full from the night before? Well, we woke up in January still full from December. Stuffed.

When it came time to go back to school, I was looking for some lighter lunch ideas to pack in my family’s lunch bags and other than the usual salads and sandwiches, I was stumped. Over the past year, I’ve really revamped what goes into the lunchbags, and I’ve been so pleased with what they now eat for lunch versus in years prior, but I was still looking for something new and different.

One weekend afternoon however, we were watching some sort of cooking show and my daughter saw a recipe that she said looked delicious, and when I saw it, I knew it’d make a perfect lunchbag lunch. Even better, it wasn’t a salad and it wasn’t a sandwich. The recipe was for a lettuce wrap that contained hummus and diced peppers. The peppers they showed were red, but here at home we happened to have some green peppers on hand, and that works just as well. I had everything we needed, so the very next time I was packing up all the lunches, those who like hummus got a lettuce

Another light, refreshing change for lunches.

Another light, refreshing change for lunches.

wrap, some pita chips for dipping or for crushing on top, and a plastic fork and knife, just in case the wrap was too heavy to eat by hand (which it turned out it was.)

It was a success; a nice, light change from our usual lunches, and I got a thumbs up at the end of the day. With such success, I did another type of lettuce wrap later that week, using some quinoa tabouleh that my husband had made with leftover quinoa from a previous meal. We didn’t have chick peas to throw in, but we had everything else.

Another great, light lunch. One of the days my husband even combined the hummus and the tabouleh into one in order to make a loaded salad, loving all this eating from his Lebanese heritage.

These lunches were quick, healthy, affordable and easy to do in the mornings and I was so pleased with the positive reviews, I’d definitely do them again. They were a nice, light change to start off the new year.

I think you can practically make a lettuce wrap out of anything, or put anything on top of a salad, so tell me, what kinds of things do you put into a lettuce wrap or on top of your salad?

 

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