Summer Food

This is food for those summer days when just the idea of turning on the oven or stove makes me sweat. I love bean-based main dishes, and this requires no cooking. You can use any summer herbs and vegetables you have around. This particular version contained:

Two cans of garbanzos
Diced red pepper
Chopped tomato -- the first garden tomato of the year!
Mint
Chives
Feta
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Pepper

I let the flavors combine at room temperature for about an hour. There was plenty left over for lunch the next day.

Canned garbanzo beans are the absolute best thing ever. I lived an entire summer in graduate school eating them at least four times a week. I didn't have much money, so I mostly kept the air conditioner off in my apartment; I didn't have a car, so I walked 90 minutes a day to and from the library in the 95-degree heat; and I ate one or two cheap, bean- or egg-based meals a day -- vegetable curries, bean salads, stews, scrambled eggs. My clothes were falling off me by the end of the summer, which was neat but unsustainable once I started having money for things besides rent again. Maybe I can get rich on marketing this in diet book form. The Sweaty Bean Method. Hmm.

I did make these potatoes in the oven. They are somewhere in between Southern raw fries and Mireille Johnston's various potato recipes in Cuisine of the Sun. I just sliced them, tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary, and roasted them at 400 for about 25 minutes. They were too salty, but I liked them.