Tuesday, June 13, 2006

What's For Dinner: Greek Wraps

When it is 99º for a week straight one really doesn't feel like cooking or eating a lot of hot, heavy food. It has always astounded me to have dinner at someone's house when it is over ninety and they serve something like soup or chicken pot pie. (One time the family didn't even have A/C!) Don't they realize that foods like that are perfect for winter because they warm us (and the house) up, and horrible for summer for precisely the same reason?

What makes this dish so perfect is that there is no cooking involved! All that is required is lots of chopping. And since it is vegetarian, that also makes it a lighter meal.

Greek Wraps

1 large cucumber, peeled and diced (between 1½ and 2 cups)
2 large tomatoes, diced (about 1½ cups)
1 bell pepper, diced
1/3 cup red onion
½ cup sliced or diced olives (any color)
1 can garbanzo or black beans, rinsed and drained
½ - 2/3 cup feta cheese (optional)
2 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
6-8 tortillas or wraps, depending on size
6-8 leaves of lettuce

Mix all ingredients except tortillas and lettuce. Add mixture and lettuce to wrap. Fold up and enjoy.

My comments:

The original recipe called for garbanzo beans, but my husband doesn't care for them so I used black beans instead. Also, one could use pitas instead of wraps. I haven't tried this, but I bet that the mixture would be good with corn added as well.

The mixture would make a good salad as a side dish to some sort of grilled meat. In fact, when we ate the leftovers we were out of tortillas, so we just had the mixture as salad for lunch.

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