Saturday, April 24, 2010

The Lunch Bunch: Salad Flax Wraps

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

A few people have asked me to post the types of things that I take for lunch. I am fortunate enough to work in an office with a modest kitchen, so I can quite easily assemble salads and things with produce I keep in the work fridge or that I grab from the supermarket over the road. I’m not really into eating a lot of fats anymore, I’m close to 80/10/10 but I’m not strict about it, I just try to keep it low-fat with lots of fruits and vegetables. So with these wraps I try to keep the amounts of flax seeds quite low and bulk them up with celery and psyllium instead. The amounts are very approximate so use what you have on hand and they’ll probably still turn out fine. I’ll write it down properly with the next batch.

Flax Wraps

Ingredients:

  • 1 large zucchini
  • 3 large stalks of celery
  • 1 Red Pepper/Capsicum
  • 1/2 cup ground flax seeds
  • 1-2 tsp psyllium husk powder
  • About 3 cups of water
Preparation:
  1. Blend everything in a high speed blender until smooth. You may want to add the water gradually. The psyllium and flax will absorb the water and make a thick gel like mixture, so you can always add more water if you think it is too thick.
  2. Spread the mixture out into circles about 3-4mm thick on dehydrator mats. Make sure not to have any spots that are too thin.
  3. Dehydrate for about 4 hours. Check as you go that they are not getting too dry. They should still be pliable.
  4. Flip them over and dehydrate another 2-4 hours.
  5. Store in a ziplock bag or container.

Tip: If you over dehydrate and end up with large thin crackers instead, you can take a spray bottle filled with water and finely mist them. Lay them between damp paper or tea towels and they will become bendy again.

Fillings

  1. You can pretty much use anything you would normally have in a salad sandwich. For these I had lettuce, cucumber, tomato and grated carrot with a squeeze of lemon juice and a wee bit of sea salt. A small amount of avocado would go down well in the mix too. I find that grated veges are more juicy so I don’t have the need for a dressing or dip which keeps things nice and simple.