Raw Veggie Collard Wraps

"I don't like wraps. You always end up with too much wrap at the end." - Brendan Sheppard

Challenge accepted, husband.

Personally, I like tortilla wraps. They were one of the first ways I started adding veggies to my diet in my early 20's when I was still helplessly hooked on processed and sugary foods.



Somewhere on the internet about a year ago, I saw a photo of a collard leaf being used as a wrap. So it's not a new idea, but it stuck with me as a thing I might want to try someday, and with a mission to make a wrap less wrappy, it seemed like a nice solution to my husband's problem.



To get the leaves ready to roll, I soaked them in a baking dish full of water for an hour and shaved down the large central vein with a paring knife.

You can put just about anything into a wrap, and as usual I was just using what I had on hand, so this is one suggestion of many:

Raw Veggie Collard Wraps

Ingredients (for 1 wrap):

• a large collard leaf
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery stalk
• 3 generous spoonfuls of hummus
• 3 fresh basil leaves, chopped

Preparation:
Soak and shave the collard leaf as shown above. Peel the carrot and cut it into 4 lengthwise strips. Wash the celery stalk and cut it in half lengthwise.

You're going to want to roll it up starting at the base of the stem- think of the leaf's spine as a belt that will go around the center of the wrap when it's rolled up. On the underside of the leaf, lay out the hummus, carrots, and celery in a column perpendicular to the central stem:



Roll up the wrap and secure it with a toothpick in the center. Trim the ends and either a.) eat them, b.) compost them, or c.) set them aside for vegetable stock. For fun, I used a long carrot shaving as a garnish around the middle.


So crunchy. So good.