Here’s another ‘Meatless Monday Meal’ to make before or after the ‘oh so delicious’ Thanksgiving Day Feast! Are you looking for something light and delicious? Then you HAVE to try this concoction I conjured up after I came home from Italy where I had the one-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to study the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ when I was in college. Little did I know then, that Romans actually do not follow “diets” but rather the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ is just their way of actually eating. This experience only elevated my love, passion, and interest in nutrition and all things food. So I arrived home with a new found knowledge of food and sought out to make something delicious as well as highlight the simplicity of any dish using fresh herbs. And Viola…this became my new recipe.
Honestly, since this Italian experience I have never looked at food the same way. I have a better appreciation for the simple meals that make your taste buds jump for joy! I make food more specifically geared around my surroundings, or what season we’re in, or the specific occasion the food is the star, all the while using ingredients for those purposes. The blending of flavors to make simple yet, out of this world combinations, add the wow factor to any dish. Simple ingredients in my humble opinion, take food from ordinary to extraordinary!
Upon returning back to the U.S. and before my senior year in college started, my dad, who always had a large garden, always had yellow and green zucchini growing. So zucchini would be my starting point as to what vegetable I was going to use for my new recipe, but what else could I add? So I started sautéing onions and garlic in a pan with olive oil while adding fresh parsley and basil to the mix. I chopped my freshly picked zucchini and thought now this is exactly something that I would have seen on the menu in Italy. But, I didn’t stop there; I wanted to add protein to this so that if I wanted to have this for lunch I would be satisfied for a longer period of time. I also knew that I did not want meat of any kind with my zucchini because to me it just didn’t look quite right. So being also equally obsessed with garbanzo beans I open, rinsed and dumped a can of garbanzo beans (aka chick peas) to the mixture and allowed the flavors to blend. I knew I was on to something when my dad walked in and said ‘you know whatever your making I could smell from outside.” I knew then that if this aroma of blended fresh herbs and onions and garlic could lure him in to tell me this from outside then it must be good! And so the old adage goes without saying…thus my homemade recipe of sautéing garlic and onions in olive oil with sliced zucchini and adding garbanzo beans was born.
Ingredients:
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 zucchini (1 yellow 1 green)
- 1-2 cans of garbanzo beans
- 1 tsp. each of dried parsley and basil
- OR use a bunch of fresh parsley chopped and 5-7 leaves of fresh basil
Directions:
- Chop medium onion in skillet with some olive oil
- Chop garlic and place on top of onion so the garlic does not burn and cook until translucent.
- Add herbs to the skillet
- Slice zucchini in even pieces add to the skillet once and cook until tender.
- Open 1-2 cans of drained garbanzo beans and add to the mixture for about 5 minutes
LEMONBERRY & FIG 