Rainbow Wrap

Have you ever seen those Subway commercials with Jared talkin' about how he lost all his weight eating Subway sandwiches? I don't know about you, but I can tell you I certainly never lost any weight chomping on a loaf of bread, cheese and overly processed deli meats made of animal products I didn't even know existed. Especially considering the whole bread-to-meat ratio you get. It's gotta be something like 84.3% bread 15.7% meat/veggies/sauce. I don't even know if I did that math correctly, but I made up those numbers like most people do when offering statistics. (Did you know 90% of statistics are made up?!)

So as with all things I no longer eat much of (sandwiches, Mac n Cheese, pasta, pizza, potatoes, most desserts...) I tried to figure out a way to reproduce  a healthier (and colorful!) but still yummy counterfeit when I was in the mood for a wrap. So I turned to my fridge, and let all the cold air out while contemplating my options.
There was leftover grilled chicken, and all sorts of colorful produce. Since I don't have any bread products in the house, I instantly thought of making a lettuce wrap, but I didn't have any lettuce. (Truth be told, it's kind of a useless vegetable. Lettuce is essentially just crunchy green water with a smidge of fiber and a sprinkle of other nutrients. I don't ever buy it.) But I had red cabbage! (Why do they call it red cabbage? It's not red. It's purple and white. Why isn't it at least called purple cabbage? Who was the color-blind naming guru of the red cabbage?) I carefully removed a big leaf from the red cabbage and chopped up a bunch of my other salad favorites like cucumbers, cilantro, strawberries, spinach, sweet peppers, matchstick carrots and a handful of cashews. I heated up the leftover chicken I had and threw it all together in the middle of the cabbage leaf, trying to roll it up like a wrap. (As you can see from the photo, my wrap became a taco, but nevertheless it was awesome!)

The last step was dressing. I've recently embarked on becoming an amateur little Paul Newman by making my own salad dressings, but really if you're buying ranch from the grocery store, no one's gonna shoot you. (Ok, someone might, but I say, if you're already cutting out the bread and adding chicken or steak instead of bologna and cheese, you deserve some damn ranch! Just don't drown everything in it).
For this red cabbage wrap creation I decided on a honey mustard dressing, but really, whatever strikes your fancy will work.

For the Honey Mustard Dressing, I mixed up 1/4 cup Greek yogurt, 1 TBS olive oil, 1 TBS apple cider vinegar, 1 TBS Dijon mustard, 1 TBS agave, and a pinch of black pepper. Amazeballs. Nuff said.

The wrap, errr... taco was delicious. The chicken was warm, and the veggies were super crispy. The cashews added a crunch and it all went well with the honey mustard. The cabbage leaf held up surprisingly well, even after five bites, and my meal looked like an edible Lisa Frank commercial, (hence why I named this deliciousness the Rainbow Wrap.)

I would have named it the Lisa Frank wrap but I'm afraid of the legal implications so we'll just stick to rainbows. No one can own those!

I hope you enjoy this easy recipe. (I sure as heck did. Can you tell?) Let me know how you changed it up. Different veggies? Added fruit? Ranch dressing or homemade? I’d love new ideas for improving it. Til then, enjoy!

- Kale Queen