It started with this recipe.  Mock tuna salad made with chickpeas?

Had to try it.  You should try it.  It’s good.  I was surprised at how much the flavor resembled tuna salad.  Texture not so much, but flavor, yes.  I made it the way I make my tuna, right down to chopped pickles.  In this case, pickled okra. So good.  You should try that in your next whatever salad you make.  I am definitely thinking of trying my lemon basil green bean pickles in my next batch.

Up next was something that caught my eye over at E.A.T. (Which incidently is fast becoming one of my favorite food blogs, I’ve gotten a few great ideas from there recently and since it’s a Richmond blog, that’s practically local!)  I digress…

Spicy Carrot Sandwich– That had my carrot loving girl’s name all over it. Only, as I was making the hummus to go with, I added too much liquid. Necessity being the mother of invention as they say, I had to get creative with the sandwich idea, as my hummus was just a little too thin to stay on a sandwich.

I borrowed a trick from the first chickpea recipe and made the spicy carrot sandwich in rice papers.  I added sprouts and romaine and we feasted.

They liked it.

And no one complained we had chickpeas for dinner two nights in one week. 

That’s pretty huge. 

Especially when you consider it was chickpeas in rice paper wrappers, twice.

I represented Edie’s school at a meeting of the city elementary schools with the schoolyard garden folks at Buford Middle School yesterday afternoon.  It seems all the elementary schools here in Charlottesville City are in different stages of starting up gardens.  There was a group of students from the University of Virginia who are involved in different aspects of some of these schoolyard gardens, including a group that is helping to develop curriculum that ties what the kids are doing outside into things like S.O.L.’s, Virginia’s standardized tests.  Some of them are headed to California this summer, to see Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard and gleam some ideas from there. There is going to be a celebration/fundraiser for the city elementary gardens in May – I may have volunteered to help with that.  I also asked about a garden at Walker Upper Elementary.  With every elementary school now developing a garden as part of the curriculum, as well as Buford’s garden, there is a two year gap for the kids in 5th and 6th grade at Walker.  I was told there is a plan for that and so I may have offered to help with that as well, since I will be a parent there next year.  Yes, I may have a problem with volunteering for too many things, but this is something I believe in so much – teaching kids about food, how to grow it, to think about where it comes from….it’s so exciting to be a part of and make change happen.  This is one of the big ways I truly think we are going to change our food system.

Speaking of schools and food, you might want to check out this month’s Chew on This potluck. It’s my friend Ivana‘s latest initiative, to get us talking about food issues.  This month is a conversation on her recent visit to the DC Central Kitchen and is it possible to bring something like that here.  Sadly, Wednesdays are my jam-packed days with things like Girl Scouts and piano lessons and I won’t be able to make it. But you should go, definitely.

And on a completely unrelated note, Pat superglued my glasses yesterday, so they are a little more stable than just the duct tape fix.  I do love that man of mine.