Inspiration

Suddenly I am all things food and want to inspire it in you. The perfect protein salad is an endless opportunity for creative combinations. A bean and grain salad with lots of vegetables and a dressing, it lasts for close to a week and never fails to satisfy. Perfect.

This salad is perhaps a familiar one for those who purchase deli items at the Seattle PCC coops, where it has been featured for 20 years. I know this because my friend Terry arrived from Minneapolis with the recipe.

History

Back in 1980, Terry, a woman I’d worked with at The Seward Café in Minneapolis, (which was run by the “Sunshine Collective”…. hippies, yes I made trays of granola) Terry split the Café and started The Goodness Shows Deli where she developed the salad, later bringing it to the Kirkland PCC in 1987.

Teresa, the dark skinned Sicilan girl from Brooklyn who grew with her mother constantly calling for her to “get out of the sun” for fear she would darken and be mistaken for a, god forbid, Puerto Rican.

The Salad

Today I whipped up a batch, from memory - I too left the Seward Café for Goodness Shows but first cooked a stint at the “Real Good Karma” in San Francisco. THESE business names, ”It’s all good”.

The Recipe

2 cups of cooked garbonzo beans
3 cups of cooked wheatberries
1 diced red onion
1 diced green pepper and ½ red pepper
1 diced cucumber
1 diced carrot
1 stalk celery
1 bunch of chopped parsley

½ cup of mayo
3 tablespoons of cider vinegar
2 tablespoon lemon juice
3 cloves of garlic
3 teaspoons of dried basil
1 teaspoon of dried dill
salt
makes around 8 cups

Creativity

Although delicious, I love the chewy wheat berries and all the veggies diced small like the beans and the berries, this salad could be dressed in oil and vinegar - made with rice instead of wheat, black beans white beans kidney beans fresh beans fresh herbs chard cilantro jalepanos olives pickles....it is an open palette. Need I say more?

Just this -

I highly recommend the classic grain bean and vegetable combo. Cheers to the plants, now start chopping.

P.S. Cooking wheat berries takes a long time. I pressure cook them for 45 minutes. They don't absorb all the water - drain and rinse.