Easy at-work lunch: chicken avocado wrap

I have hated wraps since I was in college, when they first got popular. I don’t know why, maybe the smell of the on-campus delis that served them — I could not stand that smell. I also hate that they are marketed as healthy, because usually the tortillas have one million calories and aren’t any better for you than regular bread. The tortillas I use are 80 calories each, and they hold plenty of stuff:

I used:

• Perdue pre-cooked chicken bites, southwestern flavor — about 1/3 of the package
• 1/2 red pepper, sliced and roasted
• 1/4 avocado, sliced
• 2 TBS hummus
• 1/4 cucumber, sliced vertically into thin strips
• About 1/8 block of Trader Joe’s low fat feta cheese

I roasted the red peppers and sliced the cucumbers the night before, and heated the red peppers up with the chicken in the toaster oven before putting it together. A microwave would work, or you could just have the whole thing cold. I spread the hummus on the tortilla first, then piled everything else on top. I was also going to add arugula but ran out of room; as it was I ate it more like a giant taco than a wrap. It came out to about 415 calories total; if you left the hummus out or just used less, it would be less than 400. Or you could leave out the avocado, but that would be crazy. All of my coworkers were jealous!

Lemon orzo salad with chicken, feta, and snap peas on arugula

I planned on using whole wheat orzo but couldn’t find it; I’m not sure if it exists but I will keep looking! I did this dish at room temperature; you could do it cold but cold chicken freaks me out a little.


You’ll need:

• 2-3 lemons
• 1 lb orzo
• 5 boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 1.5 lbs)
• 1.5 pints of cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 1/2 lb of snap peas, cut in half
• 1 block low-fat feta (Trader Joe’s is my fav)
• 1 cup loosely packed basil
• 10 oz arugula 
• Kosher salt and olive oil

Cook the orzo according to package directions, drizzle with olive oil and the juice from half of a lemon and stir. Also, if you don’t have one of these citrus squeezers, get one because it’s awesome. Boil the chicken thighs and cut up roughly with a chef’s knife, add to the orzo, drizzle with lemon, stir, and set aside to cool.

Crumble the feta and set aside. Roughly chop the basil (or if you’re lazy like me, put it in the mini chopper and pulse it a couple of times), quarter the tomatoes and cut the snap peas in half.

Once the orzo and chicken has cooled, add the veggies, basil, feta and the juice from the second lemon, gradually stirring. Serve on a bed of arugula.

This makes a huge amount; it’s great leftover. If you divide it into about 8 servings and serve over a couple cups of arugula it works out to about 440 calories per serving. It would be less if you used chicken breasts instead of thighs, but I think white meat chicken is gross.

This has nothing to do with food, but I was fixing some tile in the shower of my little townhouse that I rent out and needed shims to level the hardy board before I retiled the window sill in the shower. I had nothing with me that would work, found this awesome thing in a cabinet in the laundry room and used it for a shim: