I boiled a big pot of chickpeas yesterday. I love chickpeas in all edible fashion — from boiled to toasted or fried, in humus, cooked in curries, dhals, in Indian snacks and much more. I also like chickpeas thrown into salads and this is just what I did yesterday, in our broccoli salad.

Chickpeas are also cheap and easily available. A RM2.50 packet of chickpeas yielded a big portion of boiled chickpeas, which I divided and stored into 5 containers, including 1 container which I gave to our part-time helper.

Snacking on my sea-salt flavored chickpeas is anytime healthier than munching on chips and other junks.  I kept 2 containers in the fridge for our salads and for snacking (to be utilized within a week) and stored 2 containers in the freezer.

Food For Thought. Information extracted from several health websites:

Eating chickpeas provides you with a vegetarian-friendly source of protein, with each cup of cooked garbanzo beans containing 15 grams. Your body breaks down this protein into amino acids, and then uses them to maintain the health of your body’s tissues. Chickpeas are a source of incomplete protein, which means they do not contain every amino acid you need for good health. Make sure you combine them with other sources of protein, such as nuts, whole grains, dairy, eggs or meat to prevent an amino acid deficiency.

Garbanzos are a food you definitely want to keep on your “digestive support” list—especially if you are focusing on the colon. Between 65-75% of the fiber found in garbanzo beans is insoluble fiber, and this type of fiber remains undigested all the way down to the final segment of your large intestine (colon). Recent studies have shown that garbanzo bean fiber can be metabolized by bacteria in the colon to produce relatively large amounts of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), including acetic, propionic, and butyric acid. These SCFAs provide fuel to the cells that line your intestinal wall. By supporting the energy needs of our intestinal cells, the SCFAs made from garbanzo fibers can help lower your risk of colon problems, including your risk of colon cancer.

Chickpeas also contain phytoestrogens which are weak plant versions of real oestrogen. There’s evidence that these may modulate the body’s own production of the hormone in a way that could lower the risk of breast cancer, protect against osteoporosis and minimise hot flushes in post-menopausal women.

Garbanzo beans also contain vitamins and minerals and significantly boost your intake of manganese and folate. The mineral manganese helps support bone development and wound healing and also helps carry out chemical reactions important to your metabolism. A 1-cup serving of chickpeas contains 1.7 milligrams of manganese, approximately 94 percent of the daily recommended intake for women, or 74 percent of the RDA for men, according to the Linus Pauling Institute. Folate, or vitamin B-9, aids in new cell growth and brain cell communication and protects against genetic mutations that contribute to cancer development. Eating a cup of chickpeas provides you with 282 micrograms of folate, or 71 percent of your daily folate requirements, according to the NYU Langone Medical Center.