Mediterranean Chickpeas

This is honestly the BEST thing to make on a cold, snowy winter night (which, if you live in Winnipeg, you will have many of). I wasn't sure how all the spices would compliment each other (again, I'm new to the cooking thing, baking I can do, cooking will take more time), but this is a perfect mix of spice (not spicy hot, just tasty spicy) and sweet (lime juice).

I got this from Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Cookbook (I have a bunch of her cookbooks, this one is the latest one, the hardcover and larger sized one). Tosca is not a vegetarian, but there are so many great vegetarian recipes (and healthy healthy) and most are vegan or can be easily substituted to be vegan. Thanks Tosca!

Mediterranean Chickpeas

Prep Time: 20 min

Cook Time: 20 min

Yield: 6 x one cup servings

Ingredients:

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 small purple onion, peeled and coarsely chopped

2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped, leaves included

4 Roma tomatoes, washed and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, passed through a garlic press

1 red bell pepper, seeded, deveined and coarsely chopped

1 2/3 cup/ 400 mL chickpeas, canned or cooked

Juice of 2 limes, freshly squeezed

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried basil

Pinch dried thyme

1/2 tsp sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions:

-Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet.

-Add onion and celery and saute for 5 min

-Add tomatoes, garlic and pepper, cooking for another 5 min

-Stir in chickpeas, lime juice, herbs, salt and black pepper and continue cooking over medium heat for another 8 min until heated through

-Serve hot

Notes: Ha ha well I happen to be out of olive oil (who is out of olive oil?), so I just sauteed in water and it turned out great. I used a very very large purple onion (I love sauteed onion), 3 stalks of celery, 3 cloves of garlic and a full can of chickpeas (around 540 mL).

Enjoy!