These chickpea flour tacos are inspired by my biking buddy while biking to Whistler from Vancouver!

It seems fitting that we received a request to come up with some plant-based recipes for athletes, so this week we will be providing you with two recipes that are sure to fuel all your nutritional needs to take your training to new heights and crush all your sweaty endeavours & personal bests!

I’ve never really worked with chickpea flour before. The first time I’ve ever heard of it was when my mom told me it could be used as a batter for frying things, but we all know my mom’s cooking repertoire is pasta in 50 different variations, so dishes I’ve actually tried are very limited. If you ever look at our bookshelf, you will see a whole cubby of purely “Pasta” cookbooks… “Every Day Italian”, “Classic Pasta at Home”, “Weekday Pasta”, “30 Minute Pasta”, “101 Every Day Pasta”… and you got it, many others with the same classic title “Pasta”. If we ever hold a garage sale, we’d be directing our advertising to pasta-lovers. Seriously.

Safe to say though, definitely learned a lot from these cookbooks cause I can now differentiate between fusilli and rotini, and don’t tell me pappardelle is the same as tagliatelle, and agnolotti is the same as tortellini. I’ll just pick out one of the many many pasta cookbooks and show you the world of pastas even though I have zero trace of Italian blood in my body.

Okay let’s go back into the topic of chickpea flour cause I already have a feeling this will be a long post, so I’ve just got to save this pasta talk for another time. I only recently came across chickpea flour again when I met my biking bud, Harold, and we were talking about the cooking we do because we were both vegetarian so that was just an easy topic to relate to. He gave me a piece of this giant cookie/cake concoction he had made (even he didn’t know what it was, but it tasted like a muffin top to me), and I asked what he put in it, and he said chickpea flour and cornmeal. I’ve never met anyone other than myself who buys weird flours in bulk just to try out, so I was intrigued and asked him why he has chickpea flour in the pantry. It turns out he’s just been loving this flour recently when he started making eggless “omelettes” out of them, so he sent me this recipe for me to try it out myself. 

With this new discovery, I got a little bag of chickpea flour from the bulk section to try it out, and they actually turned out! I wouldn’t call them omelettes though because they are pretty much a thicker version of tortilla wraps to me, so calling them omelettes is a bit of a stretch. Even for me, and Leung always says my logic is sometimes “a bit of a stretch” hahahahha, oh boy.

At first the idea was to make a “BigAss Burrito” (apologies for the inappropriate language, but this name stemmed from a long and super funny story from our friend Pam living in first-year residence, and having a cafeteria that literally named their burritos “Small”, “Medium”, “Large” or “Big Ass”), but our pan wasn’t large enough to make a wrap big enough for a burrito to be able to claim that title, so we opted for tacos instead. Plus, tacos are more fun to eat anyways!

Really grateful for this new discovery cause now we have our own variation to share with y’all, and also really grateful to have met a buddy on this bike trip because it is just a little iffy being on a highway for a total of give-and-take 16 hours on the shoulder because there are so many trucks and vehicles zipping through the highway at any given time, and sometimes the shoulder got so narrow that we were forced to bike outside the lines, which was a little intimidating at first. At one point, I was going up and down the shoulder in zigzags up a little bump cause I couldn’t keep my bike in a straight line, and when we got there, I got made fun of for trying too hard to stay within the shoulder. Turned out Harold was just on the road behind me while he watched me struggle up and down that bump. He said he wasn’t going to risk going up and down the bump cause his bike is a road bike, and definitely does not have enough stability to roll up and down some rocks.

Nonetheless, we were super quick and made it to Squamish within 4 hours so it was a good relief. The less time on the saddle, the more time for us to recover from sitting on it for too long. I think the worst thing about cycling is probably the soreness you get from sitting on that saddle. And maybe the tough uphills, but those are kinda fun cause it keeps you focussed with your eyes on the prize.

The day in Squamish was spent at the local library and an old thrift shop, then deciding upon groceries for dinner, followed by journalling at the hostel before lying in bed by 9PM cause I’m a granny who needs to be well-rested before the constant uphill to Whistler the next day.

This photo was taken on the second day, super early-on in the ride where the gradual incline began… It was so cold cause the sun hasn’t come up yet, and the clouds haven’t quite disappeared from the sky just yet. Probably the only time I was wearing my windbreaker, cause I think I took it off pretty soon after that was taken. I didn’t even know I had these pictures until Harold sent me these after the trip. Definitely looking like a bike commuter on the highway. Zero actual biking gear, and not even using a road bike, but this just adds to the experience and to the challenge. If I ever get a chance to ride a carbon-frame road bike one day, this trip would just be a breeze after making it up in my super heavy-duty aluminum hybrid bike and overnight baggage hahahaha. Cars passing by were probably thinking “what the heck are these hooligans doing on the highway?”. At least Harold was riding an actual road bike and looked more of the part of an avid road biker than I did. I don’t know what’s better or worse.

Soon enough, we encountered the sign that says “Welcome to Whistler” and my eyeballs were popping open because I couldn’t believe we’ve made it! And in such good time too! Super elated and I was yelling ” OMG we are here!! I see the sign!!!” while Harold was behind me probably unable to hear anything cause cars are pretty loud on the highway.

Little did I know there would be many more signs before arriving at the hostel.

The hostel was up in the “highlands” of Whistler, and I wrote in my directions that I needed to exit the highway when I saw the sign “highlands” with mountains on it (I saw it on google maps when I dragged the human on the map to see the actual road). Who knew that every sign in Whistler would have mountains on it, so every time I saw a sign in the distance, I would yell to Harold “OMG we’re here!” and every time it would be a false alarm cause as I rode closer, it would say everything but “highlands”. hahahahaha whoops, I promise I was not trying to be the boy who called “wolf!”.

After a few more signs and disappointments (on Harold’s end and on my end saying “hahahahhaa, wrong sign. Just kidding”), we actually saw a sign that read “Highlands” and boy, they weren’t joking when the sign says “Highlands” cause the hostel is actually up on a steep hill. Like by steep, it’s real steep. And as soon as we saw the hidden sign, we realized this lodge used to be owned by the AMS, and because we were both UBC students Harold got excited that there might be a discount for us cause we both brought our student cards. The reception explained that it used to be owned by UBC, but was bought a few years back but they kept the sign there to this day, so no discounts for us, but it was still an affordable choice of accommodation considering it was in Whistler, and the amenities, and everything in the lodge is just so so incredible! I would stay here again in a heart beat.

Since we arrived at the lodge pretty early, we got checked in early and played a game of scrabble (they had tons of games!), before heading out to the village to grab a bite. After that, we walked back to the hostel and again, did some journalling and sitting around before it was time to wind down and go to bed.

I would say the only downside about this hostel would be that it is pretty inconvenient to get to the village if you don’t have a vehicle. A bike works, but climbing back up that hill takes some serious motivation and focus. Walking takes around 30-40 minutes one way, so even though I wanted to go back to the village that evening to grab some fruit for breakfast the next day, I stayed in the hostel instead. I had a granola bar I hadn’t eaten yet anyways so it could get me through the morning.

Went down to Alta Lake (just down the hill from the lodge) to watch the sunset, but the mountains surrounding the lake blocked the view of the sun going down. Still beautiful nonetheless. Harold was crazy and decided to jump into the lake. I was not willing to wear a wet sports bra the next morning, so I opted out while lying under the sun. It would have been nice though because an ice bath could probably do wonders for sore muscles, right? But to my surprise, my legs weren’t sore at all, so there was no urge to dive into the waters.

After the sunset, we walked our bikes back up the hill (too steep to go up with bikes a second time). This hostel does female dorms, and some hostels don’t do that, so it was a pleasant surprise! I opted for that and it turned out nobody else was assigned in my room so I had no trouble falling asleep cause people were not coming in late from bars and stuff. Slept at 8PM that night, cause the next day was going to be the most strenuous of them all.

Early the next morning, we met in the common area at 6AM and set out on the road again… this time alllll the way back to Vancouver. Time for some serious riding!

Byebye, Whistler lodge. Nice staying here for the night! I’m sure I’ll be back someday.

The mountain views on the ride back are simply stunning. It’s especially breathtaking when there are no cars so early in the morning, so the highway is super quiet and serene. The sun is just slowly coming up and lighting up the snow-capped mountains!

The leg from Whistler to Squamish was pretty quick (pretty much all down hill except for 2-3 long inclines, but nothing comparable on the way up). At this point, Harold and I have established that anything we encounter on the highway is considered “flat” for us cause we somehow have trained our brains that any sort of uphill looking kinda thing is “flat” hahahah. Or maybe it was just me, but he made it up the hills just the same. So whatever he was telling himself, it worked!

Got lost exiting the highway and trying to find my way to Lion’s Gate Bridge, and ended up going down this scary trail by the river. But I’ve learned to “always follow the river” in boy scouts, so somehow I ended up back by the highway and found the Lion’s Gate. And afterwards, as I was riding through downtown to get back to Vancouver, I got real real hungry and my energy levels were completely depleted so I literally plopped on the side of the sidewalk and munched on an apple I had in my bag. So grateful to have had that apple because I was feeling light-headed at this point. When I made it to my street and to my front door, I was so happy I don’t think I can ever describe the level of happiness I was experiencing! This was the best bike trip ever and I wouldn’t change a thing! Feeling so so alive!

Aaaaand this wraps up the trip! Now time for you to wrap up some tortillas cause these are actually so yummy and turned out so much better than I thought they would! Not going to lie, I didn’t have the energy to whip myself up these tacos after this adventure, so I was boring and stuck a pan of veggies into the oven to roast while I scrubbed myself clean from highway debris and sweat crystals. Yup, I am ending off this recipe talking about debris and sweat. I’m probably the worst and grossest recipe blogger around hahaha!