Chickpea Smash Sandwich

This Chickpea Smash Sandwich was a staple in my house growing up. My parents raised my sister and me on vegetarian diets and were very focused on healthy eating. I am grateful that my parents prioritized this. I know it wasn’t always easy while they worked full-time. That said, I have to confess that the health foods options weren’t always that exciting as a kid. Our PB&Js were always on whole grain bread with all natural peanut butter and no sugar added jellies (which I happen to love and prefer now, as an adult!). I didn’t have great trading leverage in the cafeteria when other kids were swapping Little Debbies for Kit Kat bars and I had carrots and hummus. While I love these choices my parents made for us now, as a kid I sometimes longed for what other kids were eating.

But not when I was eating this Chickpea Smash Sandwich. This one didn’t feel like a sacrifice. This one I ate with pride and joy.

The Chickpea Smash has great flavor. The chickpeas are nutty and earthy. The lemon is bright and zesty. The green onion adds a sharp pepperiness, the parsley adds a freshness, and the celery adds a crunch. It comes together quickly and tastes so good that it’s sometimes hard for me to get it onto the bread and into sandwich form since I’m busy shoving spoonfuls of it into my mouth.

What Makes Chickpea Smash Sandwich Revolutionary?

1. Package Free

It’s so easy to make this sandwich ahead of time, put it in a sandwich tin, and bring it on the go. You can skip the plastic-wrapped sandwiches from the store and enjoy this fresh one instead.

2. Recyling Cans

You can buy dried chickpeas and cook them yourself (stay tuned for a future post!). However, using canned chickpeas is faster and is not very wasteful if you recycle the can. Recycled aluminum can be repurposed and reused infinitely, meaning it can be melted down and formed into new products over and over without losing any of its integrity (Source). This is very different from plastic, which degrades every time it is repurposed. You should still recycle plastic, but plastic’s quick degradation into useless trash is why it is so important to reduce single-use plastics.

Plus the recycling process for aluminum uses 95% less energy than extracting new aluminum (Source). Make sure when purchasing that your can is free from BPA lining. BPA lining has been linked with health issues (source) and can complicate the recycling process (source).

3. Vegan

My parents were not vegan when they created this sandwich – they were vegetarian, meaning they ate dairy and eggs. But there was no need to add dairy or eggs to this sandwich. It was inadvertently and perfectly vegan as created!

4. In Season for Fall

The parsley, celery, spinach, and green onions are widely available in much of the Northern hemisphere right now. If food is in season near you, that means you are getting the freshest, most nutritionally-rich version. If something is out of season near you and you see it on the grocery store shelves, it had to travel further to get to you. Produce that must travel far is often picked before it is ripe and sprayed with chemicals to delay ripening. Therefore, eating these transported foods increases your carbon footprint and decreases the nutritional value and tastiness of the food.