Spicy Garlic Chickpea Salad with Lemony Vinaigrette

My work week is always jam packed; I work long days and when I'm at work, I'm lucky if I can take my breaks (and people think librarians only read books...). The food I take to work needs to be quick to make, easy to eat, and delicious, which is not always easy to do.

This chickpea "salad" is perfect and meets all of the above requirements! It also makes perfect leftovers as the flavors meld together and get better over time.

I love that you just throw everything into the bowl and dive in. That's my kind of eating!

Spicy Garlic Chickpea Salad with Fennel and Roasted Tomatoes

Extra-virgin olive oil
Two 15 oz. can of chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
4 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 pints cherry tomatoes
Rosemary and thyme to taste
1 cup brown rice
Jarred pepperoncini
Small bulb of fennel
Shredded Parmesan
Fresh parsley

Cook 1 cup of rice as directed on package and set aside. In a medium saute pan, add chickpeas, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Saute for 6-8 minutes or until chickpeas start to blister. Season with salt and pepper; set aside.

Meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Toss cherry tomatoes with dried rosemary and thyme and olive oil. Roast until they're blistered and beginning to burst open; about 20 minutes.

Put some rice in a bowl and ladle about 1/3 cup of the chickpea mixture into bowl. Add tomatoes and pepperoncini (to taste). Shave about 4-5 pieces of fennel from the bulb (the white part) and add to the bowl. Add Parmesan, parsley, and lemony vinaigrette. Mix to combine and chow down!

Lemon vinaigrette recipe can be found here.
Recipe adapted from bon appetit magazine.

This recipe is super healthy, gluten-free, and can be made vegan and dairy-free (just omit the Parmesan cheese)!

Easy Crustless Zucchini Quiche [Gluten-Free]

It's been rainy here lately and I can already tell that summer is coming to a close. It's almost as though Mother Nature is trying to close summer down early; some of the trees are already turning a lovely burned orange! I may be the only one who feels this way, but the summer is my least favorite season. Whaaat? Yes I said that. I would probably enjoy them more if I moved out of the Midwest, but summers here are equal to being shoved into a steaming pot of hot water and left to simmer.

I can't wait to don blazers and scarves, drink pumpkin spiced lattes, and go pumpkin picking! My dad's garden already has the first signs of pumpkins and gourds cropping up alongside sunflowers and it looks like heaven. When I was visiting my parents last week, they let me raid their overflowing garden and I walked away with several massive zucchinis! Seriously, you could have hurt someone with those things.

That being said, I've been amassing zucchini recipes to try and use them up. I love the idea of eating seasonally, but I'm not used to it! I love being able to say "I want peaches" and find them in the store. But with some produce, eating them out of season just doesn't taste the same. (I'm looking at you tomatoes... you are nasty during the off-season!).

Zucchini is a great vegetable. It's versatile, nutritious, filling, and can be used in sweet and savory dishes. I felt an unusual craving for a quiche, so I put on my thinking cap and dove in.

Easy Crustless Zucchini Quiche
Serves 8

1 3/4 cups of shredded zucchini (about two medium sized zucchinis, and you can always add more)
1 small onion
3 eggs, beaten
2 tbs organic heavy cream (I use the Organic Valley brand)
1/3 heaping cup of Parmesan (or sharp cheddar), plus more to sprinkle on top
1/3 cup Bisquick Gluten-Free Pancake and Baking Mix
1/2 tsp dried dill
1/4 cup light olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Chop onion and saute in a pan over medium heat until soft. Set aside.

Slice zucchini into thick strips and cut off the seeds. Shred zucchini until you have 1 3/4 cups.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and add the heavy cream and dill seasoning. Pour shredded zucchini, Parmesan cheese, Bisquick and oil into the egg mixture. Add onions to the mixture and season entire mix with salt and pepper.

Generously grease a 9-inch pie pan and pour mixture into the pan. Sprinkle Parmesan over the top and put in the oven. Bake for 35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Tastes great served warm or cold!

C'est La Vie

I had to really wrack my brain to find a topic for today's Blog Every Day in May challenge; we're supposed to write about our "lot" in life and what we're doing to improve it.

As I sat down to think about it, I realized that, despite facing challenges that come with life in general, I have very little to complain about or blame for anything in my life. I'm so thankful for that.

I've always had family and friends who loved me, I found someone to love and marry and be with for the rest of my life, and I have been successful in other areas of my life. I guess if I had to write about something, it would be about my health. It hasn't been an easy journey for me, but it's definitely something I'm figuring out and working to improve!

When I was 14 I became incredibly sick. I had no idea what was going on and it was really affecting my ability to function. After multiple doctor visits, I was diagnosed with IBS. As of right now, there is no cure and no method of prevention since the medical community doesn't even know what causes the symptoms. Even though that's the case, some doctors believe that certain foods can exacerbate the symptoms. So, I had to make many changes to my diet and continue to monitor which foods seemed to make me feel sick.

Over the next several years I was able to manage my way around it, only getting sick maybe one week out of every six months. But most recently, last year, I became more sick than I'd ever been before. I checked in to the hospital, was put on fluids because I was seriously dehydrated and malnourished (because a common reaction to the symptoms is to not eat because all it does is make you even more sick) and they ran some tests on me, including a CT scan. Long story short, my condition, due to its chronic nature, had developed into something a little more serious- ulcerative colitis. For the rest of 2012, I had to go to extensive doctors visits, exams, and had a minor procedure done to determine the severity of my condition.

Since there is no cure for it, my doctor only had one recommendation- medication. I am not the type of person who runs to get prescriptions every time I have the flu or  a cold so I told my doctor I would do more research about the particular drug I was being prescribed. During my research I found that it is and immune system suppressant, seeing as my body believes it has a contaminate that it's trying to get rid of, when in fact it doesn't. It's common in other auto-immune disorders. Basically the drug would cause my immune system to function at a very low level. This is incredibly risky because I would be susceptible to other germs and bacteria which can cause other sicknesses. I called my doctor to ask whether it was absolutely necessary for me to take medication and she admitted that it wasn't absolutely necessary. It's just the usual next step with patients like me. I then felt free to ask about alternative solutions to handling the symptoms and she recommended several diets, one of them being the elimination of gluten.

As is the usual reaction to someone who is eliminating gluten, you are upset, angry, and anxious about what you can eat. Everything has gluten in it!! You shed a fear tears because now you can't eat donuts anymore (a huge vice of mine) and cake is off limits. Well, that's what I thought anyway. It really helped that I already had someone close to me who was gluten-free (my mother-in-law) so she helped me find brands of g-free bread that didn't taste like cardboard (Goodbye Gluten and Udi's are the best). After several months of doing my own research and embracing new foods, I realized how little I was giving up and how actually toxic our everyday wheat is. I went gluten-free officially in November 2012 and honestly haven't looked back.

All in all, my health has caused some roadblocks in the past, but removing food from my diet that was harmful to me has drastically helped improve my health and the way I feel each day!


Here are some of my favorite sources for gluten-free food creativity if you are or are considering removing gluten from your diet. I know that these blogs and sources really helped me so I wanted to share that with anyone who may also need them.

Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef - Her knowledge about the gluten-free diet is so extensive. She has amazing videos where she walks up and down each aisle of the grocery store and points out which products to avoid and which are safe. I learned so much here.
Silvana's Kitchen - Silvana's website has incredible recipes for gluten-free pastries, desserts, etc.
Gluten-Free Girl - This is my gluten-free Pinterest board with recipes, more sources, and information about the gluten-free diet.
My Five Day Gluten-Free Meal Plan
Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cookbook - I was given this for my birthday. It's a great cookbook that is perfect for g-free beginners! It includes recipes for fried chicken, chicken pot pie, pizza, muffins, pancakes, etc. All you have to do is buy the Bisquick g-free mixture and you're good to go. It's the best book for the newbie.