Chickpea and Arugula Salad

Many years ago, a friend of mine came with us for our annual family reunion in the Catskills.  Upon arriving at our destination, she looked around and asked,”Where are the mountains?”  She was from Idaho, where they have “real” mountains, so when I got the opportunity a few years later to go to Idaho with her, I was excited to be able to compare mountain ranges for myself.

First thing she did was take me four-wheeling.  Off we went careening wildly through the rugged, predator-filled foothills singing “Born to be Wild”.  (Okay, so may be we hit a top speed of 5mph while I sat behind her, clinging on for dear life, praying we wouldn’t plunge over some precipice and be eaten by wolves.  Although, in retrospect, my singing probably scared away anything that had ears within a 5 mile radius).

Returning triumphantly to her sister’s cabin, I agreed to go off again with her niece who wanted to show me where she and her cousins played.  Since I was now an expert at the whole four-wheeling thing, I agreed and we headed off into the wild…and this is where things took an ugly turn.

We got to her “fort” which was buried deep in the wilderness (probably a 2 minute ride away), where I kept waiting for the cast of Axe Men to show up as she gave me a tour.  That rock formation was the kitchen, this one was the game room.  And then there were the prints….and not the Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams good kind of prints, but the big, scary wolf, bear and elk bad for a tasty human kind of prints in the mud.

I casually suggested that we might want to head back to the cabin and strolled over to the ATV (all right, I may have sprinted for it like an Olympic runner going for the gold, dragging the poor child with me), where I proceeded to flood the engine turning our only means of escape into a giant Ritz cracker with us being the tasty cheeze topping for the hungry predators lurking in the bushes.

Being mechanically gifted as well as an avid outdoorsman, I proceeded to push every button and  turn and twist every knob, while surreptitiously eyeing nearby trees trying to figure out which one we could possibly manage to climb to prevent becoming an amuse bouche for a hungry elk (I somehow decided they were our most likely way to die based on the size of their prints, but I’m pretty sure a bear cub could have taken us down as well).  Meanwhile, the ten-year-old blithely chattered  on about camping and exploring and life in the Cascades as though her life wasn’t in eminent and mortal danger.

Finally, the gods of civilization smiled upon us and the engine fired up allowing us to glide safely back home (okay, so maybe it was a full-blown, panic driven dash down the trail to safety, narrowly escaping a certain and grisley death).

But the mountains were spectacular.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 2 cups packed arugula
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces (about 1  1/3 cups)
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced fennel
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced red onion
• feta
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon ground mustard
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, combine the chickpeas through the onion.
2. In a small jar with a tight lid or a small bowl, combine the oil, lemon juice, mustard and salt and pepper (I used about 1/4 teaspoon salt). Pour over the chickpea mixture and refrigerate for at least one hour.
3. Before serving, top with feta.

Enjoy!