Salad

Before the long text, here’s the recipe:

ASIAN INSPIRED CHICKPEA SALAD

3 cups spinach

1 Asian pear

1 mandarin orange

1/2 cup canned chickpeas

1 clove of garlic

1 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce

1 tbsp rice vinegar

Handful of cilantro

METHOD

(Step-by-step photo tutorial included in the rest of the post, so read on if you want)

Make your dressing. Crush the garlic clove, add that to a bowl, and pour in the soy sauce and vinegar. Give that a good stir.
Throw in the spinach and chickpeas. Toss well to combine. Do make sure every leaf is coated, or it’s a definite shame if you don’t.
Add the fruit, and give that a toss to jumble up everything. Sprinkle on the cilantro, and toss again if you’d like, or eat as is.
You’re done! Be sure to enjoy.

You know what’s fun? Trying to stuff as many fruits and vegetables as you can into a salad. Then spitting out your mouthful because you did NOT know what you were doing and were flying by the seat of your pants because “it’s just a salad”. Whew, that was one long sentence. And that never happened to me. Never. Where’d you get that idea?

We’ve all fallen off the wagon before. I’m not talking about a literal wagon. If you have fallen off a literal wagon before… I am so sorry, and ouch. But no, I’m talking about healthy eating. Why is eating healthy so hard? It’s good for you, so shouldn’t your body embrace it, instead of rebelling? Wait- that’s right, fat and sugar is addicting. Seriously. Even your body can’t help itself. We’ve all had a cookie, thinking “I’ll have just one”, only to end up inhaling the whole bag.

It’s funny to think we have issues with something that’s necessary in sustaining our lives. Too much of this… too much of that… I will say that healthy eating is hard, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think. You don’t need to adhere to a strict plan. You shouldn’t have to give up all your favourite foods. I’m not an expert on this, nor am I too experienced, but I do have some little nuggets I’ve learned along the way. But that’s another post(s?) for another time.

Let’s take baby steps. We’ll start off with something simple: a salad. No, salads aren’t just all lettuce. Nor do they have to contain lettuce. There are hardly any rules for salads, except that it’s a mixture containing vegetables. Knock yourself out playing with salad combinations, but please don’t slam the salad bowl on your head- that’s not ideal. You want a concoction, not a concussion. I’m sorry I assume you take everything literally. I don’t know why I think that. I’m getting off point here. What was I saying?

Right. I used to hate salads, but only because the ones I ate had mayonnaise. I hate mayonnaise, and it’s fine if you pelt me with rolling pins and frying pans now. But we’re not talking about mayonnaise now. Salad’s the star. And dressings are an integral part of salads. You may disagree with me, and that’s fine, but I don’t believe in drowning all the wonderful ingredients in a creamy sauce. I do like my caesar. I do like my thousand island. But not all that much.

For me, the point of a salad is to highlight the freshness and simplicity of the produce. There’s something quite refreshing in the raw, unaltered taste of the fruit and greens (and non-greens). Simpler is better when it comes to salad. Two ingredient dressings? Right up my alley.

Try to pick the best and freshest ingredients you can. Alright, enough with the words. Let’s make a salad. Oh, and one more note before we begin: this salad alone contains all of your five a day. Yes, really. But you’ll only get all five servings from this if you eat it all. Which isn’t too hard to do. *Burp*. I ate it as a standalone meal though, and not as a side.

Begin by crushing your garlic.

As you can see, I used a handy-dandy garlic crusher, which makes things so much easier. But you can do it any other way.

A slight warning to you all- we’re using raw garlic here, so you may or may not get garlic breath. Don’t eat this before something important, like a date, or an interview, or a trip to the donut shop. Not the last one. Definitely not. But you know what they say, a garlic clove a day keeps the vampires at bay. Actually I have no idea if they do say that. Or who “they” are. Well, I ask all the right questions, don’t I? I also made that saying up, but I’ll be using it from now on. You can use it too, if you want.

Fancy that. I’m talking about vampires already. The trends are getting to me.

Seriously though, I do love garlic. One clove of raw garlic may be overkill for you, so feel free to adjust that to taste. But please, please, don’t leave it out!

To the garlic, add the soy sauce (reduced sodium, because health) and vinegar.

Mix it up, and there you have your dressing. How simple is that? You can complicate it a little, if that’s what your heart tells you to do. Add some minced ginger. A squeeze of lime juice would work well here, but unfortunately I didn’t have any on hand.

The world’s your oyster. So is this salad. But don’t stray too far, or it won’t be this salad anymore. Makes sense? Good.

Now prep your chickpeas. Measure them out, and rinse them, to wash off all that slimy stuff that comes with them in the can. Nasty, that’s what that is.

Toss the chickpeas in with your dressing and set aside.

Ah, spinach. Green, gorgeous, and full of good stuff. Time to add them into the mix. Just throw the leaves in with the dressing and chickpeas.

Beautiful. Leaves are beautiful. Look.

It’s okay if you think I’m crazy for saying that- I sketch leaves for fun, so I’m bound to think leaves are eye appealing. Am I starting to make more sense to you now, or less?

More.

Still not quite enough.

That’s more like it.

Using your hands, tongs, feet, or whatever’s convenient, toss the leaves with the chickpeas and dressing. Set that aside while you prep the other ingredients.

Asian pears. Delicately sweet and crisp.

On an unrelated note, isn’t my cutting so pretty? (No.)

In it goes with the rest.

Now peel your mandarin oranges.

Oooh, hello there.

Love it.

Mmmandarin oranges. Yum. Better than regular oranges, in my opinion. (I’m sorry regular oranges- I’m not all that fruit biased. I love fruit.)

Section it, cut it if you’re so inclined, and add them to the bowl.

Notice the dirty bowl? I was hoping you wouldn’t. That’s what happens when you toss spinach violently.

Go outside to pick some cilantro. It’s okay if you can’t, store bought cilantro will do great. All I’m saying is homegrown is better. Maybe I’m biased.

Oh, and speaking of homegrown, look at this arugula!

But that’s not going in our salad now. So you have my permission to ignore this.

Back to the cilantro. Chop it up if you want, or tear it, or leave it whole, and sprinkle it over your salad. At this point you can add whatever additions you want. Scallions, or even sesame seeds.

All that’s left to do is toss the salad.