We cook dinner almost every night, often dedicating over an hour to the process of chopping, sauteing, simmering, and pulling together a meal. But lunch has long been our most neglected meal. If we don’t have leftovers, we revert to frozen meals. Even on days I work from home, when cooking lunch is an option, I’m more likely to skip the meal than take time to make and eat it. This semester, we’ve gone in search of better lunches. Some of that is still prepared foods. My favorite so far on days that we don’t have something fresh around is microwavable sticky rice with a packet of tuna, and a packet of nori snacks.
But we’re also trying to plan lunch options the way that we do our dinners. On Sundays, my goal is to make one thing that we can pack into lunches across the week to come. I don’t want to meal-prep a full week ahead and eat the same thing in sadder iterations as the week goes on, so instead, I’ve been looking for foods that benefit from some time sitting in the fridge, and that can be packed alongside of whatever fresh vegetables or other leftovers we might have around.
This chickpea salad has been my favorite so far–it’s reminiscent of a potato salad, but with a lot more crunch from the copious amounts of celery. If you make it the way the recipe suggests, it’s a quick option that you can throw together in about fifteen minutes. If, like me, you want to spend at least an hour in the kitchen, it tastes even better when made with dried chickpeas. As a bonus, this also means that I can do one of my favorite meditative kitchen activities: peeling the skins off the chickpeas. Everyone in my family thinks I’m crazy to take the time, but I maintain that the taste and texture difference is worth it, and the process is a gratifying one to me.
Here are the adjustments I make:
- Soak dried chickpeas overnight, then simmer in a pot with about a tablespoon of baking soda until cooked through.
- Rinse the chickpeas, and agitate them in cold water to help loosen the husks, which should float to the top where they’re easier to skim off. You can remove at least half of them this way, which speeds up the process of peeling the remainder.
- Increase the amount of celery for extra crunch, and use whatever soft herbs you can find in abundance (at this time of year, it’s hard to get dill in Hattiesburg)
This post is a brief one, because in all honesty, I’m still looking for more lunch recipes! If you have good ones to suggest, please drop a link in the comments. In the meantime, here are a couple others I’ve tried:
- White Bean Caprese Salad: I marinated the white beans, but kept the other ingredients separate until the morning when packing my lunch.
- Black Bean and Corn Salad: no recipe needed, though this is similar. I use black beans, frozen corn, green onions, and lots of lime, olive oil, and spices.