Deb's smashed chickpea salad

I love easy recipes!  And meals I can feel good about, nutrition wise!  And chickpeas!  And taking photos in natural light, especially if it means not showing my face in the office 'til... I don't want to incriminate myself, but you know, after I cook, photograph, and eat lunch.  Smashed chickpea salad is perfect.



I'm an olive hater, so I omit those.  I added raw red peppers into the mix.  A little of this, a little of that.



This recipe is so simple, infinitely versatile (add feta, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, pepperocinis, help me think of others!) , and dirt cheap.  And so good I could eat it for lunch every day.



At this point I'm just gushing, so I'll stop.  But seriously Deb, nice one.

another grilled sandwich

Ok, I was pretty proud of my sandwich grilling skills after making grilled cheese. I had seen a grilled pb&j on this blog, linked to ages ago by A Cup of Jo.  And since I've never been a jelly on her sandwich kind of girl, I went with something a little different.



Grilled peanut butter and banana!  Or pb&b.



Serve with plenty of milk.

Deb's tomato soup and grilled cheese

Phil went out of town for a week to a conference, so I took this opportunity to make a personal favorite. A huge batch of soup that would keep me well fed and warm while he was away.



I was inspired to make a tomato soup by these really prettily packaged canned tomatoes from Trader Joes. I followed this recipe from deep within the smitten kitchen archives. The only changes I made were using water instead of chicken broth to make it vegetarian, and using light cream instead of heavy because that's what I had in the fridge.



Of course, the giant food processor got to come out and play for this one.

My grilled cheese was a little less classic than Deb's version: I made it with my favorite pain de campagne from Whole Foods, Emmentaler cheese, and a few spinach leaves.



Somehow the contents of my grilled cheese sandwiches seem to end up on the outside of the sandwich; I'm not that smooth when it's time to flip it over. But I like the toasty cheesy bits, so it's all good.