This Greek Pita Sandwich is stuffed with creamy hummus, crunchy veggies, and salty feta cheese!
As I try to lead a healthy lifestyle, I often struggle with what lunch should look like.
Let’s be real, I like to EAT. And by that I mean I want something with complex flavors that has a good mouthfeel. You know what doesn’t have a good mouthfeel? The words “thyme twig.” I had to write it for a recipe the other day and even just typing it out makes me feel like I have a lisp. Thyme twig. Thyme twig. Anywaaaaays…
I feel like most people don’t want to eat “healthy” because they don’t just want to be crunching on raw vegetables all day. I know I don’t. But I also know that I don’t need an insanely huge lunch to get me through to dinner time, which has somehow become the geriatric early bird special since having kids. If the two year old doesn’t have dinner in his little hands by 4:45 there’s hell to pay. That usually takes lunch down to what I would consider a snack size portion.
So what’s a girl to do when she’s trying to eat healthy but still wants to EAT? Make a killer sandwich! Full of those healthy raw vegetables but layered with enough carbs and creamy goodness to really make that mouth feel good (see what I did there? Mouthfeel? Mouth? Feel? Thyme twig? Sorry…)
Pita pockets are a great choice for sandwiches because they limit how much you can stuff inside. This Greek mixture of hummus, feta, cucumber, olives, and tomatoes gives you a variety of nutrients with lots of flavor. Most large grocery stores carry roasted red pepper hummus, which will give you all that roasted flavor with less work and less oil, but if you can’t find it simply substitute plain hummus and a bit of drained and chopped jarred roasted red peppers.
Don’t let your lunch be a thyme twig.
If you make this recipe, be sure to rate it, leave a comment, or tag #theliveinkitchen on Instagram!
Recipe
Greek Pita Sandwich
Ingredients
- 2 whole wheat pita pockets
- 2 tablespoons roasted red pepper hummus
- 2 teaspoons fat-free crumbled feta cheese
- 6-8 thin slices of cucumber
- 4 kalamata olives,, pitted and chopped
- 4 cherry tomatoes,, quartered
Instructions
- Spread 1 tablespoon hummus inside each pita pocket. Sprinkle the inside of each with 1 teaspoon of feta cheese. Layer in cucumber, olives, and tomatoes.
Amina | PAPER/PLATES says
I love the freshness of this! Perhaps it would even make a good take-to-work lunch…
Nina says
It’s a good sandwich, and I might stick with the recipe as above for a “portable” lunch. But for me, it’s got too much pita for the amount of filling, and needs a little “zing”. So now I make the following adjustments:
1) I pre-cut a single pita in half, put a teaspoon of feta in each half, and put it in the oven at 350 degrees until the pita is warm and starting to get a little crispy. (This, BTW, won’t melt the feta, but it does intensify its flavor.)
2) While it’s warming, I make a dressing with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, the juice of 1/4 of a small lemon, a good pinch each of oregano, dill weed, and garlic powder (probably about 1/4 teaspoon of each), and about half a dozen grinds of black pepper.
3) I then stuff each half with a tablespoon of hummus, half the chopped olives, 4 slices of cucumber, and 2 quartered tomatoes, and drizzle on half the dressing. If I have some fresh flat-leaf parsley, I chop a few sprigs and top the filling with that.
It’s definitely messier to eat with all the filling shoved into one pita (plus the dressing), but if I’m at home, it’s no big deal to scoop up whatever might ooze out o
nto my plate with a fork. It’s also super-tasty with the herbs, and a sandwich of one pita is still very filling since it has all the protein and veggies of the two in the original recipe.
As a side note, I find that a 1″ chunk of cucumber yields 8 slices that I’d call “thin”.