Day: January 18, 2016

My kids are hungry all the time.  So, when we made this Avocado Black Bean and Orange Zest Lettuce wrap, and they were actually full for more than an hour, I was a happy mama.  We made this easy lunch recipe using a fun ingredient: Orange zest.  It is part of our Cooking with Kids A-Z series and Z is for Zest!


It’s hard to believe that we’ve cooked our way through the alphabet while cooking with new ingredients and exposing my kids to new foods.  We’ve come up with new favorites, like our Carrot Veggie Puffs and have tasted and shared some old family recipes, like our Apple Dumpling recipe.  We’ve made bread dough, snacks, and main meals.  It has been a fun year of cooking and I’m excited for the next phase of this project.  For now, try cooking your way through the alphabet with great recipes from A-Z!

Avocado Black Bean Lettuce Wrap with Orange Zest

This post contains affiliate links.


This recipe is so easy to through together.  It’s one that we’ve made before, with different versions.  Today, we added orange zest, and the result was crisp and tasty.  My kids called the zest our secret ingredient!


For this recipe you’ll need a few ingredients:
Iceburg Lettuce (or any large-leaf lettuce)
Black Beans
Cherry tomatoes, quartered
Avocado, diced
Zest of 1/2 orange

Pull apart a few large leaves from the outside of the head of lettuce.  Place the lettuce leaf on a plate until ready to build your wraps.

Prepare the black beans, and place them in a dish.  Chop the tomatoes.  Kids can do this with a child safety knife.  Peel and slice the avocado.  Once sliced, avocados are a great food for young chefs.  It’s soft enough for easily slicing.  Add the tomatoes and avocados to the bowl.  Zest the rind of 1/2 orange.  My preschooler loves zesting oranges and remembered the last time we did this task (and we don’t often zest oranges!)  We used our standing box grater
to zest the orange, and this worked well for my 4 year old.  She could stabilize the grater with her non-dominant hand while zesting the orange with her dominant hand.  Older kids could use a classic zester.

Now it’s time to build your lettuce wraps.  Load up the lettuce leaves with as much or any combination of the avocado, black beans, and tomatoes.  Sprinkle the orange zest on top.  We found that with the citrus-y touch of the zest, we didn’t need any dressing at all in our wraps.  What a filling and low calorie dish this is!

Stop by and see what the other bloggers on the Cooking With Kids A-Z team have cooked up with Zest:

Try a few of our other cooking with kids recipes:

     

Want to cook healthy foods for your family?  Grab Yum! Deliciously Healthy Meals for Kids, a cookbook for busy families that want healthy meal ideas.