Chickpea Salad with Minty Yogurt Dressing

I made this chickpea salad from the Kitchn along with chicken salad to make pita sandwiches. This would also make an easy healthy packed lunch as either a sandwich or salad, but I think it would be best to keep the yogurt dressing separate from the salad until ready to eat.

CHICKPEA SALAD WITH MINTED YOGURT DRESSING

Adapted from the Kitchn

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coarse salt

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 cup tomatoes, chopped

1/2 cup red onion, chopped

3 cups drained chickpeas 

1 cup plain yogurt, preferable Greek

2 tbsp mint, chopped

Cookie Dough Truffles

This is basically just cookie dough without raw eggs, so you can gorge yourself without worrying about scary diseases! Perfect. When I was looking up stuff about this recipe, there was also talk about raw flour, but I am willing to ignore that because I don't care - cookie dough truffles!!!

I made little balls and covered one third with melted chocolate chips, one third with melted white chocolate chips and left one third uncovered, but you could easily just eat it with a spoon out of a bowl. The recipe I used is from a cookbook by the bloggers of Love and Olive Oil - I got the recipe as reposted on Bakerella.

COOKIE DOUGH TRUFFLES

Adapted from The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook, reposted on Bakerella

1/2 cup butter, 1 stick (room temp)

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

2 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips (or normal sized)

sprinkles, optional

toothpicks or small popsicle sticks

Orange & Cranberry Pound Cake

This is another example of how I can have really good intentions of making something for a particular reason or to give to someone, but then time after time what actually happens is I start eating it right away. I was going to save this for Thanksgiving, but instead we'll probably eat all of it by Thursday.

ORANGE & CRANBERRY POUND CAKE

Adapted from Joy the Baker's Chocolate Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 tbsp orange zest (I used the zest from 1 large orange)

8 oz cream cheese (1 package), softened

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks), room temp

4 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup fresh cranberries

Lemon & Dill Chicken Salad

I originally made chicken salad this way, with lemon and dill, for my friend Angela's baby shower, and I made it again for Halloween to serve in pitas! We wanted to make sure we all had some real dinner in addition to the huge amounts of sweets we scarfed while handing candy out to trick or treaters. (The recipe took a while before making it to the blog since I lost my camera charger for the millionth time.)

You can either make this very lemony or just a little lemony, but either way it's a great lunch and a crowd-pleaser! This is just a slight variation on the chicken salad I usually make, which is a little more traditional, without the lemon and herbs and with walnuts. I think I usually use some white vinegar instead of lemon juice in the sauce when I made it the other way.

LEMON & DILL CHICKEN SALAD

5-6 chicken breasts

1 cup green onions (or white onion), diced

1/2 cup raisins (or halved grapes)

1 cup apple, roughly chopped

1/2 cup fresh dill, trimmed and packed (or one very full handful)

1/2 cup mayonaise 

1/2 plain yogurt or sour cream 

juice of 1 lemon
as much zest as you want (1 whole lemon's zest if you want it real lemony)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp salt
pepper