These Smoked Almond and Chickpea Salad Sandwiches are a favourite of mine and I’ve made them countless times. They always turn out AMAZING. So if you haven’t made these bad boys yet, turn to page 53 of the first Thug Kitchen cookbook, and get your freak on.

In psychology there’s a well-known phenomenon called the Observer Effect, where the awareness of being observed causes people to behave differently. It can have both positive or negative effects.

So, let’s say someone is juggling with fire in the street. Someone stops to watch them. The juggler starts juggling even better because they have an audience. They feel like a badass and start doing all sorts of mad tricks, which then attracts even more passersby who all ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaah’ as the fire dances in the air. You can really see it, right? The flames set against the night sky, the colours, the cheers, the faint whiff of smoke in the air…It’s beautiful.

The flip side of this scenario is that the juggler when feeling observed starts fucking up, dropping flaming balls all over the place, burning themselves, and terrifying spectators as they accidentally (and repeatedly) launch flaming devil sticks into the crowd. Can you imagine that too? The screaming, the running, the looks of horror on people’s charred faces which are all lit up by the fire hurtling towards them. The smell of singed hair in the air…

The point is, feeling observed makes us all react differently.

For me it tends to be less of the super-juggler, and more towards the drop-your-balls-on-the-ground-juggler. So, when I tell you that ALL the other times I’ve assembled these sandwiches they’ve looked like something straight outta some food magazine, you gotta believe me.

This time, they sorta look pale, undertoasted, and not as exciting as usual. I don’t know what happened. They still tasted awesome. All I can say is at least this time I didn’t burn anything, break any plates, or melt my table-cloth.

First I made the nuts, and while they were in the oven doing their yummy smoky business, I cut, scooped, and smooshed the avocado. I threw in the other stuffs and mashed it all together. Mash, mash, motherfucker!

I assembled all this yummy goodness on toasted bread, extra Dijon for hubby, and a slice of random cucumber thrown in for me. (I know that the recipe doesn’t call for cucumber, GET OFF MY BACK! I know what I like, bitches, and it compliments the goddamn tomatoes.)

Then I stepped back to take in my masterpiece. I felt like a director at a photo shoot where the models have all turned up late and tired looking, because they were out partying late. This director was not amused.

What do you usually do in a situation like that? Pimp slap them ’em, threaten to fire their asses, and then get your assistant to pour copious amounts of coffee down their throats. Maybe give them some extra concealer too, to cover the bags under their eyes. Since I thought that these sandwiches would not benefit from being slathered in gross make up or dunked in coffee, I had to send them out on to the runway as they were. I took photos from all angles to try to make the bitches look better, but this is the best I could do.

But TRUST. They tasted awesome. And that extra crunch from the almonds! Their insides were better than their outside appearance, and isn’t that what really counts anyways? Isn’t that what we are trying to teach our children? That it’s what’s inside that counts? So I like to think that these pale looking, yet tasty, sandwiches have made the world a better place.

I’m changing the world for the better, one sandwich at a time.

Peace.