Warm Chickpea Salad

So it has been my goal to try and post every day.  I haven't been sleeping well...could NOT fall asleep last night.  However, even though I was really sleepy, my first real day in my department was awesome.

Once I get home, while I am still adjusting, I just want to veg out and watch TV and read magazines...but the one thing I still do almost every night is make myself dinner. Therefore, while I don't want this to necessarily be a food blog, I still want to post what I am up to, and I am always up to cooking something.  Bear with me while I get adjusted and soon I will be out adventuring again!

Tonight's dinner was from Orangette. I had a vinegar dressing on my salad for lunch, and was craving some more vinegar flavor, plus had some carrots getting soft.  It is also really warm out (despite pouring this morning) so I didn't want to slave over the stove.

Therefore, I made a warm chickpea salad with shallots and a red wine vinagrette.

The recipe calls for one large shallot.  Albertsons had a pitiful shallot selection, so I used two tiny ones instead.

Then I put the shallots in a bowl with half a teaspoon of chopped garlic, three tablespoons red wine winegar, and some salt.  It needed to sit for ten minutes.

While this mixture was resting, I brought a pot of water to a boil and threw in two cans of chickpeas.  You are supposed to "blanch them" which means make them white or pale by extracting color.  All I did was boil for two minutes, rinse, and drain.

Those are chickpeas, not corn!

While that was blanching, I shredded one jumbo carrot, and chopped about half a bunch of Italian flat leaf parsley.  My carrot shreds were a little too big...grating would have been a better option.

Then I added these vegetables and the shallot mixture to the chickpeas, along with third of a cup of olive oil and some salt and pepper.  Voila'! Dinner was served.