My office building is the 8-5 home of about 300 people. The large number of these people get take out lunch and bring it back to the office. This means, every day I smell pizza, Chinese, fried chicken, and a variety of other wonderful foods 🙂
Most days I fight the urge to dive head first into these types of food. I find that I am more tempted by these greasy delights on days when my brown bag lunch is less than stellar. So, I try to plan yummy and delicious lunches to battle back against the 1,500 calorie lunches that seem to call me by name.
Over the weekend, I prepared a recipe for Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps to pack in my lunch this week. These lettuce wraps taste incredible and are similar to the lettuce wraps served at P.F. Chang’s. This is super easy (~20 minutes start to finish) and could be an easy weeknight meal or lunch.
I started with this recipe from Food.com, but I made several changes. I added carrots because #1 – I like carrots and #2 – I thought the color of the carrots would make this meal ‘prettier’ :). Feel free to omit them if carrots are not your thing. The chicken mixture would also be scooped into a halved bell pepper and enjoyed, if you prefer.
- Serves: 5
- Serving size: ¼ cup
- Calories: 218
- Fat: 8.1
- Saturated fat: 0.1
- Trans fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 16.6
- Sugar: 8.1
- Sodium: 504
- Fiber: 1.3
- Protein: 18.9
- Cholesterol: 56
- 1# Lean Ground Chicken
- 4 mL Olive Oil
- 1 Medium Onion (chopped)
- ½ TBSP Chopped Garlic
- 2 TBSP Lite Soy Sauce
- 3 TBSP Hoison Sauce
- 1 TBSP Rice Vinegar
- ¾ TSP Ginger Paste
- 2 TSP Srirachi (or more if you like heat)
- 8 oz can whole water chestnuts (drained & chopped)
- 10-12 baby carrots (optional – chopped)
- Butter Lettuce
- Add olive oil to saucepan and cook the ground chicken (drain after cooking)
- Add onion, garlic, soy sauce, Hoison sauce, vinegar, ginger, Sriachi and carrots
- Cook on low/medium for 10 minutes
- Add water chestnuts and cook 3-4 minutes
- Scoop into lettuce and enjoy
Trust me on this one, you will feel much better yourself (and your lunch) if you take a little time to plan something healthy, nutritious and YUMMY in your brown bag lunch!
