I recently started working in a food pantry, and the organization has been overwhelmed, so addressing certain problems just haven't gotten the attention they deserve for a while. One of those problems is that our storage room is full of cases on cases of dried garbanzo beans! We have our normal ordering where we get to choose what we stock, but we also have an event once a month where our food bank sends us pallets of food we don't choose in order to move food off their shelves, and that day we give out pre-packed bags of food to whoever comes, and the rest goes to the pantry to give out for the rest of the month. It seems like we just keep getting more of these dried garbanzo beans in each month, and our typical clients don't want them. I've seen many clients opt out of getting any proteins at all if we don't have meat that we can give them. I want people to get the nutrition they need, that we have available, and I want to clear our shelf space to be able to also keep fruit and vegetable options in stock.

The community my pantry serves is mostly black, so I'm looking for recipes that might be similar to foods they would have grown up with that would make these garbanzo beans appealing. I'm asking this specifically because I'm hoping to have recipe cards available that might prompt our clients to choose to try them, as opposed to just slipping in these dried beans into every bag, which will then just take up space on their shelves. Any insight is appreciated.