Sometimes, the food blog world kind of feels like an exclusive club.
Don’t take that the wrong way, we’re not saying that us bloggers and self-proclaimed “foodies” are snobs and won’t let anyone else into our club or anything- as a matter-of-fact, it’s quite the opposite. We love it when other people read our blogs and we always get excited when people tell us they’ve made our recipes! We spend lots of time trying to encourage everyone to give our recipes a try.
But the problem is that so often our recipes aren’t always doable by the general public.
Because let’s be real, here- how many people do you know who keeps things like coconut flour, nutritional yeast, xanthan gum, butter extract, peanut flour, stevia, and date paste stocked in their pantries and fridges? Unless you have at least one foodie friend, probably no one.
Over the past week this was brought to our attention. While our recipes may look delicious, we were told by some people (in a completely friendly way) that they want to make some of them, but when they look at the ingredient list they have no idea what half of the stuff is, and it scares them off.
Basically, our recipes are so often geared toward the food-blogging crowd. People who aren’t deterred by unconventional ingredients and are willing to go to every random health food store in the city looking for one specific item.
But don’t you think we should make our content more accessible to the general public? Isn’t the purpose of writing a healthy food blog to get people in the kitchen cooking healthy food?
We’re not saying that we should all ran-sack our pantries and get rid of all those random ingredients, but we are saying that we should all attempt to create recipes that appeal to everyone on a more regular basis. If we want to help people become healthier, we can’t scare them off with weird and unknown ingredients, can we? (Let’s be real, here, “nutritional yeast” is not the most appetizing-sounding thing)
Which is why we have decided to start a new weekly feature- “Simple Sundays”. We’re not going to stop using all the random ingredients we’re accustomed to buying (and off the record, most of the stuff we get can actually be found at No Frills or the Bulk Barn), but at least one day a week (aka-Sunday) we’re going to post a recipe that requires minimal ingredients, all easy-to-find and recognizable to the general public, and is very simple to make.
So to kick things off with our first official “Simple Sunday”, we decided to make you a snack! And what is simpler than roasted chickpeas!
Here is the story behind this: a family member asked us for some help coming up with some healthy snack ideas. We gave this person a few ideas, like having a bowl of cut-up veggies in the fridge, making smoothies, having yogurt and berries, making healthy dips (like hummus ;)) and then we suggested roasted chickpeas. To our surprise, she had never heard of doing this before! Then we thought, if she hasn’t heard of this before, there’s probably a million other people out there who have never heard of eating roasted chickpeas! So we decided we had to fix this, and we went ahead and made two recipes for you. One sweet, one savoury, to appeal to everyone! Let’s start with the sweet:
Maple and cinnamon! There is no sugar added to these, (aside from the sugar in maple syrup) and no oil. Just pure crunchy goodness!
But there are a lot of other reasons why this recipe is an excellent snacking option, and that’s all thanks to the chickpeas! Chickpeas are very high in fibre, a great source of protein (not a complete protein, but if you’re eating a balanced diet you should have no problem getting all the amino acids required to make complete proteins) low in fat, sodium, and of course have no added preservatives or chemicals, so you can munch happily knowing everything that’s in your food!
So here’s the very simple recipe:
Maple-Cinnamon Roasted Chickpeas
Prep: 5 min.
Bake: 30 minutes
Makes: 1 cup
Ingredients:
1 c. cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400F.
Pat the chickpeas with a towel to soak up the excess water. Place them in a bowl and toss them with the maple syrup and cinnamon. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil (shiny side down) and spread the chickpeas over it. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 or 10 minutes, until the chickpeas are crispy and browned. (don’t worry if some of them start looking a little bit black) Allow to cool completely, them place them in an air-tight container and store in the pantry for up to 2 weeks.
**this recipe can easily be doubled!
And now on to the savoury ones: chili chickpeas!
This recipe has no salt, and only a teensy bit of olive oil- but loads of flavour, we assure you 🙂
So if you’re the kind of guy (or gal!) who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, these are probably right up your alley! If sensible snacking has been your Achilles heal, we strongly encourage you to give these a try! Even if you’ve never eaten chickpeas- we promise you won’t be disappointed!
And if you don’t particularly enjoy spending lots of time in the kitchen, you can make a double batch and then you’ll have enough to last you for at least a week (depending on how quickly you eat them but we give you fair warning: these are addictive!).
Chili Roasted Chickpeas
Prep: 5 min
Bake: 30 min
Makes: 1 cup
Ingredients:
1 c. chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp paprika
pepper (add as much as you like, more pepper = more kick!)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400F. Pat the chickpeas dry with a towel, and place them in a bowl. Toss them with the olive oil and the spices. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil (shiny side down) and spread the chickpeas across the sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 or 10 minutes, until they are browned and crispy. (Don’t worry if a few of them become slightly charred-looking) Allow to cool completely, then store them in an air-tight container and keep them in the pantry for up to 2 weeks.
And that concludes our first Simple Sunday post! If you have anything you’d like us to post about for simple sundays, please send us an email at twosaucysistas@gmail.com, or leave a comment below! We’d love to hear from you 🙂
~twosaucysisters
