Hearty chickpea & avocado salad

I don’t normally order salads when I eat out because they're often rather boring, so I created a few easy salad recipes I actually enjoy eating at home.

My no. 1 is chickpea & avocado salad:

Ingredients for approx. 2 big portions:

1 can of chickpeas
a handful of radishes
a few stems of fresh dill
1 large avocado
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil
1 handful of cherry tomatoes
3-4 handfuls of lettuce/mixed leaf salad
ground black pepper
optional: grated cheese 

The instructions are simple - chop and mix everything in no particular order. 

Greek (Cretan) Cuisine

Crete offers a good variety of vegetarian food and, most importantly, you can enjoy traditional Greek vegetarian food (rather than rely on pasta or pizza).

It's probably not the most vegan-friendly place, but most restaurants should cater to special requests as the food appears to be fresh and made from scratch.

I didn't find many dishes with my favourite sources of protein (chickpeas and lentils), except for a salad in our hotel, which also happened to contain ham...but you can definitely survive in Greece being a vegetarian or vegan.

Surprisingly, I didn't come across much hummus or pita bread, perhaps they're more common in other parts of Greece. My favourite dishes were grilled halloumi cheese, stuffed peppers and tomatoes, roasted vegetables and potatoes, feta pastries, as well as "regular" European food like salads, pastas etc.

Grilled halloumi

Stuffed peppers & tomatoes

Feta pie

A random selection of veggie food in our hotel restaurant

Just to be clear, this is not a picture of one of my meals!

beautiful Balos