HonestlyHealthy

Today I rediscovered one of my favourite "healthy eating" cook books. I remember when I first bought this I did not like the sound of about 90% of the recipes. Most vegetables were to my dislike and I hated goats cheese. But a year has passed since then and I was pleasantly surprised that this time I felt spoilt for choice and did not know which one to choose because they all looked so delicious!!! Honestly Healthy is a great little book with AMAZING tasting recipes that when you eat them you forget how much goodness there is in the ingredients you use. 

http://www.honestlyhealthyfood.com

The lunch I made today was adapted from their recipe for watercress, roasted onion and pistachio salad.  It was so good that I could not contain my excitement. I was instagraming photos of it, telling everyone I could think of about it and had to calm myself with a cup of tea as my heart rate was racing so much. It literally tasted like an asian stir fry (without the noodles)form my favourite Chinese restaurant. The best part is it is SO simple to make!

So here is what I did...

Ingredients:

- 1 small red onion, cut into fine chunks
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 30g (though I used way more, more like 100g) of canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
- 1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
- 2 inches of cucumber, finely chopped
- some mixed seeds and pine nuts (they say to use pistachios and pumpkin seeds, 15g of each, but I did not have any to hand!)
- 70g watercress (Though I had mixed leaf salad)
- 1 spring onion, finely sliced length ways

Dressing:

- 2 tbsp Olive Oil
- Juice of 1 Lemon
- 1 tbsp tamari
- 1 tsp honey (though they use agave syrup - I like honey more ;))

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 170C
2) Place the chopped onion in a baking dish and drizzle with the olive oil (and balsamic to caramelise them!) and bake for 30 mins or until soft. (The finer you chop them, the less time they need!)
3) Place the chickpeas in a bowl and toss with the roasted onion, garlic, chilli, cucumber and nuts and seeds.
4) Whisk the dressing ingredients with a fork
5) To serve, scatter the salad on a plate, top with the chickpea mixture, spring onion and then drizzle the dressing on top
6) Eat it. And then you will die and go to heaven.

Just looking at this makes me want to digest everything now so I can eat it all over again.

I finished it off with a cup of loooooovvvveeeeee tea. Literally, it is called love tea (but all it is is little rose buds floating around in your cup). I really, really like this tea. I got mine from InsideOut in Richmond, but if you type "Rose Bud Tea" into google there are loads of sellers! A really nice, relaxing and calming way to end a meal after the excitement of the burst of flavours and my subsequent adrenaline rush!