Collard Green Wraps [Vegan]

Delicious, nutritious, cheap and vegan! A quick and easy recipe that leaves your tongue tingling with spice. This past quarter I took Steve Gliessman's Agroecology course at the University of California, Santa Cruz; a great hands-on class that also had an amazing 2-unit lab. 

 Throughout the ten weeks we worked every Wednesday out on the CASFS Farm doing various experiments, the particular one that I am referring to was with collard greens and green beans intercropped system. Meaning that each week, we got to harvest (for scientific purposes but of course)...which equals delicious and copious amounts of free and organic food to make up new recipes with!

Fold that shit*

Furthermore, my old special someone got this new book "100 Foods to Stay Young" and it has an alphabetical list by food category, accompanied with a recipe...the best part is that next to the recipe for each one there is a nutritional content, so I thought I would do some research of my own. I present you with the following:

Health Benefits:

Collard greens are an amazing cruciferous vegetable oh my goodness, to be honest I was eating them for the iron, but man of man. Collards have cancer preventative properties, as in give me another helping! The cancer-preventive properties of collard greens may be largely related to 4 specific glucosinolates found in this cruciferous vegetable: glucoraphanin, sinigrin, gluconasturtiian, and glucotropaeolin. Each of these glucosinolates can be converted into an isothiocyanate (ITC) that helps lower our cancer risk by supporting our detox and anti-inflammatory systems.

This connection between collard greens and cancer prevention should not be surprising since collard greens provide special nutrient support for three body systems that are closely connected with cancer development as well as cancer prevention. These three systems are (1) the body's detox system, (2) its antioxidant system, and (3) its inflammatory/anti-inflammatory system. 

To get the most health benefits from collard greens, it is recommended to let them sit for a minimum of 5 minutes before cooking, sprinkling with lemon juice to help activate their myrosinase enzymes and increase formation of beneficial isothiocyanates in the greens (and flavor). 


Collard Green Wraps (and yes, they are Vegan):  
1 1/2 c. of Dahl
2 Green Serrano Peppers (any hot pepper would suffice)
1 c. of diced tomatoes
Enough collards to wrap up the insides

Make grain of your choice, I went with dahl (split garbanzo beans) and added in the diced tomatoes, and peppers. Selected some massive sized collard greens and wrapped them on up, them steam for ten. Also makes a perfect appetizer if you make them smaller, just saying ;)