Black Bean Salad Stuffed Pitas

Summertime comes with days when you can be too hot to function, much less cook. This cool, flavorful, and refreshing dense bean salad is satiating and quick to make, no stove needed. For the pita, I use whole wheat ones from Trader Joe’s, which you can toast, lightly heat on a grill, or eat cold, which is what I did on the roasting hot day I made this bean salad. With an assortment of summer veggies, a can of rinsed black beans, and some seasoning, you’ll have a nutritionally balanced meal in minutes, and you can continue your summer festivities in peace.

This recipe serves 2-3 people

Ingredients:

1 can of black beans (about 2.5 cups cooked)

½ red onion (soaked) or Shallot

1 medium-sized tomato (deseeded)

1/3 of an English cucumber, or ½ regular cucumber (deseeded)

½ yellow or orange Bell pepper

2 tbsp Nutritional yeast

1 ½ tsp of chili powder

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Instructions:

Rinse your canned black beans of excess sauce and add them to your mixing bowl.

Dice the red onion finely, and then toss in some cold water to soak. Raw onion can be spicy; soaking reduces this sensation a bit while keeping the aromatics.

While the red onion soaks, cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, and deseed. Then slice thin and dice.

You want your veggies to be approximately the same size as a black bean, so do the same dicing to the bell pepper.

For the tomato, quarter and then deseed. To avoid food waste, you can save the seeds and juice to add to sauces later.

Dice the tomato as well.

Add all the veggies to your mixing bowl with the beans, and season to taste.

To finish off your meal, you can add the condiments of your choice to your pita, then stuff with this bean salad. I used olive tapenade, while my sister added feta and tzatziki. This was the perfect cooling meal to eat before we charged out into the heat for some bookstore perusing.