Summer bean salad

The feta cheese and olive oil make this a bit more Mediterranean than adobo, but it still tastes pretty good with corn chips. The standard pita chip wouldn't hurt either, of course.

Parsley - 2 bunches, chopped

Tomato - 6 plum, cubed

Scallions - 2 bunches, chopped

Cucumber - 2 each, cubed

Chickpeas - 1 15.5 ounce can*

Navy bean - 1 15.5 ounce can*

Kidney bean - 1 15.5 ounce can*

Feta cheese - 8 ounces, crumbled

Olive oil - 1/4 cup

Lemon juice - 1/4 ounces**

Salt - 4 tablespoons

It's easy enough to make this vegan by eliminating the cheese, but feta is tasty, even if the fat-free version feels like chewing on a sponge. Feta's also rather salty, so there might be a need to adjust the amount of salt added. I also think this could have used a bit more lemon juice.

As for the rest of the ingredients, among the three beans I used in this dish, the kidney bean's the largest - I cut the tomato and cucumber to match. The curly variety of parsley (which is easy to mistake for cilantro, especially when they're next to each other on the shelf) provides more bulk, but is less flavorful than the flat-leaf variety. Curly parsley is also slightly less expensive around here, so into the shopping basket it goes - and watch out for the sand, on both the parsley and the scallions! Wash, wash, wash.

The photo above is one serving out of an estimated 16. Plugging these ingredients and that serving estimate into a nutrition calculator results in 166 calories per serving, but I had to make do with an entry for regular feta, so the results are a bit off here. Making allowances for ingredients already in stock (and therefore without an exact value on the printed receipt), I've also got a cost estimate of $1.17 per serving (in case your budget has more down-to-earth considerations than implants).

If you're fortunate enough to have some of these ingredients from the garden by now, consider cobbling this together for a full-fledged meal, whatever brand shows up on the can you choose.

7/21 -

* Drained, of course.

** 4 ounces. Silly me.

Just ran through Take 2 of this recipe with 2 tablespoons of salt and full-fat feta. The feta's a much better texture, and the saltiness of the whole thing is just enough, despite the reduced amount of salt.