Chickpea Salad Sandwich

Since becoming vegan I haven't been too creative in the sandwich department other than PB&J or grilled vegetables with pesto. Things like that. Pretty simple stuff. I have a few books with sandwich ideas but they all are pretty involved and unless I have hours to kill in the kitchen I look more for simple sandwiches that will last for a week's worth of meals. 

Enter the chickpea salad sandwich...

This isn't the best picture, and I meant to get one of all the ingredients I used, but I forgot, so I shall just tell you what they were. In the filling was cooked chickpeas, chopped celery and red bell peppers, some earth balance vegan mayo, salt, pepper, and celery salt. Mashed together until I got the consistency I wanted and then plopped it on some whole grain bread with lettuce. I even added chips to the inside of the sandwich posted above because I like the crunch. I make this every couple of weeks and I make a batch big enough that it makes at least 10 sandwiches, so when I am hungry and don't want to cook I can just make myself a sandwich easy peasy. 

Thats all she wrote. 

White Bean Puree and Grilled Eggplant Sandwich

        A few weeks back I made a pot of white beans. It was the first time I had cooked white beans from dry beans, and I wasn't totally crazy about how they had ended up. They were a little underdone and I just wasn't thrilled by their flavor. All the same, I ended up freezing close to five cups of them. I knew that I didn't want to use them whole again so I was trying to think of ideas with what to do with them. I decided that I would make a puree out of them and possibly turn them into a sandwich. I make hummus all the time, so I figured making a white bean puree would probably be about the same so I researched a few white bean puree recipes online to get an idea on flavor profiles and then took to the kitchen.
       For the white bean puree I used about two cups of white beans, three garlic cloves, salt, pepper, the juice of one lemon, and some olive oil, which I then pureed until smooth. I added a little bit more salt after the first run and then pureed it again.

I also grilled some eggplant in the way that I enjoy best. Lots of chopped garlic mixed with low sodium soy sauce and olive oil and coated each eggplant piece on both sides. I heated up my panini press, which I also double as a grill, and grilled off all of the eggplant.

Then it was time to put together the sandwiches. I sliced some tomatoes, washed some arugula and baby spinach, and got out the balsamic. To put this together I sliced some ciabatta bread in half, slathered bean spread on both sides, added balsamic to one of the sides along with some fresh basil leaves, topped that with the grilled eggplant, sliced tomatoes, and fresh greens. After putting this together it went back into the press to be heated through.

DELICIOUS!