I’m still the world’s laziest lunch maker. Ever.

I’m lucky if I make it to the table to sit down like a civilized human being most days. When I’m busting my butt in the kitchen for hours each day, the last thing I want to do is chop more vegetables or do a lot of prep for lunch. So, I tend to fall back on frozen veggie burgers (I love Amy’s California burgers), hummus, salsa, and wraps because they are effortless and ready in 5 minutes. And thank goodness there is no chopping required!

I recently discovered the obvious: prep something the night before and I’ll have more variety in my lunch. I’ve talked about this little problem before (see part 1 and part 2) so as you can see old habits die hard! My problem is that I rarely think about lunch at night time, but perhaps this chickpea salad may finally change that…

I spotted a vegan “Not Tuna Salad” on the Whole Foods website and used it as my inspiration for this amazing chickpea salad wrap. While I don’t think what I came up with tastes anything like tuna salad (let’s be real, it’s chickpeas), I think it tastes even better! And this is coming from a former tuna salad addict who used to eat canned tuna for lunch all the time in university. Yes, I was that girl stacking towers of 59 cent tuna into her shopping cart like a crazy person.

So whether you never liked tuna or maybe you love tuna, add this to your lunch rotation! Pop it into a container, add a wrap and fruit, and you have yourself a well-rounded lunch…no veggie burger required.

Amy, I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Lunch This Week: Chickpea Salad Wrap

Eric asked me if it really tastes like tuna. “Umm…no…” I said after careful thought, “but it actually tastes better!” Who needs tuna when it tastes this good? It’s fresh, crunchy, filling, and has a great pop of dill. If you’ve had a jar of dill pickles sitting in your fridge for years, now is the time to use them.

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Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 (15-oz) can chickpeas (or 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas)
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 2 tbsp chopped red onion
• 3 tbsp chopped dill pickle (~1 pickle)
• 1 tbsp minced fresh dill
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 tsp regular mustard
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds (or pecans/walnuts)
• salt/herbamare and pepper, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 325F and toast the sunflower seeds for about 11 minutes.

2. Mix everything into a bowl, mashing up the chickpeas slightly with a fork, and season with salt (I used Herbamare) and pepper, to taste. Stuff into a wrap or pita, or enjoy with crackers or rice cakes.

Nutritional Info (based on 3 servings): 222 kcals, 8 grams fat, 32 grams carbs, 7 grams fibre, 1 gram sugar, 8 grams protein.

Ok, so I didn’t make this “the night before”, but I did make this at 10am on Saturday morning! Bonus points, right?

(Note: I didn’t end up using the paprika as shown in the photo)…and yes, that’s a dill pickle leaning up against the mustard. The jar of pickles has been in our fridge for a year? Amazingly, I’m not dead after ingesting it. Love pickles.

Chop, mix, and serve. Easy.

Veggies burgers certainly have their time and place in my work week, but thankfully now does this wrap! I hope you enjoy it too!

and a link to share for you today…

In case you haven’t seen it already, check out this thought-provoking NYT’s article by Mark Bittman – “We’re eating less meat. Why?” which talks about the 12% drop in US meat consumption in the last 5 years.

“We still eat way more meat than is good for us or the environment, not to mention the animals. But a 12 percent reduction in just five years is significant, and if that decline were to continue for the next five years — well, that’s something few would have imagined five years ago. It’s something only the industry could get upset about. The rest of us should celebrate. Rice and beans, anyone?” ~Bittman