Chickpeas Deserve Love Too

ChickpeaStew (3)

How do you eat your chickpeas? Most likely it’s in hummus. If you’re really fancy, you might roast them with a little curry or chili powder. But aside from that, really when do you have chickpeas as a feature ingredient of a meal? I keep dried chickpeas in my collection of mason jar beans and dried goods ingredients, but I rarely use them. Sometimes I’ll make hummus, or toss them in with some white beans or as part of a multi-bean chili. My black beans come and go, refilling the quart sized jar every other month or so, and the kidney and white beans go almost as quickly. But those poor wrinkly chickpeas just sit there. So in an effort to highlight this special ingredient (and avoid a trip to the store for different ingredients, I embarked on a dish to make chickpeas shine.

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A Bit of Heat to Take Away the Chill

CrockpotChili (3)

As Fall turns to winter and the weather gets bitter (then 60°!..then 30° again…) I take my crockpot down from it’s summer space up top the cabinets, wash off that gross stuff that forms from storing things up high, and give it a seasonal place among my “regular” appliances. If it didn’t make our apartment so damn hot in the summer, or had central air, I’d probably use it year round. There’s nothing better than coming home after a long day to find your apartment smelling AMAZING and dinner ready to serve. I probably use my crockpot once a week, whether it’s stew, crockpot chicken or something else. But my absolute favorite is chili.

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