I do eat fish on occasion but I haven’t had canned tuna in years. I actually can’t remember the last time I had it and I don’t usually miss it, to be honest. There have been times during this pregnancy that I’ve craved a tuna sandwich though, this week in particular, and I wanted to find a satisfying alternative. Enter chickpea salad! For me, the appeal of tuna salad is less about the tuna and more about the creamy, crunchy, salty combination. Chickpeas can have this consistency too, if combined with the right mix of ingredients.

Like tuna, chickpea salad is also a breeze to prepare and can be made in minutes assuming you have all the ingredients on hand. Being pregnant, I have a tendency to go from feeling hungry to famished in an instant, so this is very important! The most challenging part is mashing up the chickpeas, but if you don’t care about having some whole chickpeas in the mix, it’s very fast.

I followed the Simple Veganista’s Mashed Chickpea Salad recipe pretty closely for this (her recipes never steer me wrong!) but did make a couple of very minor adjustments. Since I like lots of crunch, I added some chopped cucumber to the original recipe, which includes celery and carrots already, and I used regular onion instead of scallions since that’s a personal preference. I also used less tahini and found the consistency to be just fine. I was in the mood for something hearty, so I decided to make a sandwich using my fave Ezekiel sesame bread, but this chickpea salad is also delish on top of greens or even by itself (like I ate it the following day).

Let me know if you try this or have suggestions for other variations!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 15-oz can of chickpeas
• 1/3 cup chopped celery
• 1/3 cup chopped carrots
• 1/4 cup chopped cucumber
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Rinse and drain chickpeas and add to a mixing bowl. Use a potato masher or fork to smash chickpeas until you have a roughly mashed texture.
2. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Serve on bread, on top of a green salad, or eat it on its own!

*Adapted from The Simple Veganista’s Mashed Chickpea Salad