Name: Chickpea Salad (adapted from Oh She Glows)
Prep time: 10 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 2 cups chickpeas, drained; 1 small to medium shallot, finely minced; 2 tablespoons plain yogurt; 1 tablespoon mayonnaise; 2 tablespoons dill or sweet relish; 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley; salt and pepper, to taste

Easy chickpea salad is a delicious quick vegetarian salad. It’s perfect on a sandwich or spread on crackers, and you won’t even miss the chicken or tuna!

Lately, I’ve been kind of flying by the seat of my pants as far as meals are concerned, at least lunches. We eat the same thing (coffee, eggs, cheese toast) for breakfast every.single.weekday. And, of course, I’m a compulsive meal planner where dinner is concerned. I just can’t seem to get into the hang of planning lunches, even when I try to plan them.

Take this week, for example. I have been trying to lose a few pounds (or at least a few inches, since my favorite jeans haven’t fit me in a year and this, my friends, is a tragedy). I actually went to Stephanie O’Dea’s (of Crockpot 365 fame) website and printed off a breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks meal plan (scroll down to the bottom of her printable page). I then embarked on a quest to plan a week’s worth of meals that not only fit into the caloric range I wanted, but also fit a specified amount of macronutrients (carbs, protein, fat) while still giving me leeway to cook for the blog. And I was successful….not so successful, though, when it came to actually making the meals that I’d planned for lunch. As I type this, it’s Wednesday and I have yet to cook any of the things that I had planned to cook for lunch this week. Oh well…I’ve still been logging my meals in My Fitness Pal and they’re fitting, so I guess I’m doing okay.

So all this to say, I’ve been planning for weeks to make these baked falafel bites from Oh She Glows. They really do sound good and not very difficult or time consuming, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to make them. Instead, I decided to mash up the chickpeas and mix them up into chickpea salad-also inspired by Oh She Glows, but this time the Oh She Glows Cookbook. I really didn’t follow Angela’s recipe at all, though…just using what I had in the house. The recipe is meant to mimic chicken or tuna salad, and let’s be honest…of course it doesn’t taste like chicken or tuna….but this easy chickpea salad is every bit as tasty and easy as tuna or chicken salad to throw together!