Weeknight Cooking

A little bowl of sunshine is this simple but tasty recipe for Chickpea Soup with Spiced Pita

Chips.  The base here is softened celery, carrots and onion, then add to it 6 cups of water, two cans of chickpeas, some fire roasted diced tomatoes, a pinch of cumin and coriander, then let it simmer for a good 20 minutes.  Put a quick bake on two hands full of cut pita pockets and sprinkle those as well with the same spices as the soup.  Although I could easily see adding some fried ham or bacon, this soup is already hearty, the chickpeas holding up their crispy shape (unlike, say, butter beans in soup)

well and adding a potent protein.  The pita bread over the top serves as a sort of spicy-edged crouton or cracker.

When you have a panini-maker, it's never far from your mind when dinner time arrives.  Virtually anything you have on hand, fresh or otherwise, can be turned quickly into a crisp and textured sandwich.   I almost always look to it when it's soup night in order to round out the meal.  So I mixed together the traditional ingredients for a tuna fish sandwich, then added diced celery, one clump of kale for greens texture, and then thought that maybe a mere hint of fresh grapes would sweeten the mixture, placed a couple of scoops into a flour wrap, rolled it, then let it crisp under the weight of the hot hood.

Who would identify the secret ingredients in this meal this time around?  Julia knows a chickpea when she sees one now that she enjoys a spoon of hummus here and there; and it was Abby who

looked up from a quick bite of the sandwich, "are there grapes in here?"  Yep.  The next I looked the sandwich was gone.