Cathy Wolz
To make a salad fun to eat, put colorful, crunchy tidbits in it, as in this week’s Health-e-Recipe for Chickpea, Pepper and Pine Nut Salad. Not only is it low in calories, its cancer-fighting ingredients are filling and satisfying.
Buttery-tasting chickpeas are in the bean (a.k.a. “legume”) family, so you know they contain folate, a B vitamin, plus plenty of fiber – both cancer-fighters, according to AICR’s expert report and its updates. Their delicious taste is complements by sweet red pepper and tomato, plus a little light onion flavor from the scallions – also cancer-fighting foods.
Toasty little pine nuts are often used in pesto sauces, but here they lend an extra dimension of taste and crunch. Nuts contain healthy fat, but lots of it; they fit into a cancer-fighting diet as long as you eat only a few.
Despite its name, buttermilk isn’t teeming with saturated fat. It’s the liquid left behind when cream is churned into butter – a slightly sour and thicker version of regular milk. The low-fat version used here has only one-quarter of a gram of fat per tablespoon. If you buy buttermilk for this recipe, you can use the rest baked goods like muffins, bread or pancakes. Or substitute it in this dressing with some plain, low-fat yogurt or low-fat sour cream.
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