Mediterranean Bread Salad

1 cup romaine lettuce
1/2 cucumber
1 tomato
2 green onions
1/4 cup parsley
1/4 cup mint leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cumin
1/2 cup hummus
1 whole wheat pita

Hands-on Time: About 1 hour 15 minutes

This is a nice dish to take in a lunch if you want to get all your proteins, vegetables, and grains in one bowl. This amount will make two salads large enough for a meal, or more if you want to serve this as a side dish.

Wash and shred the lettuce and arrange it in a large serving bowl. Wash, peel, and chop the cucumber into a regular-sized bowl. (If you want to serve this dish over more than one meal, you might select a lidded container so that you can keep the dressed vegetables separate from the lettuce until you are ready to eat it). Wash and chop the tomato, green onions, parsley, mint, and garlic and mix them with the cucumber. Pour the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and cumin over the cucumber mixture and stir. This mixture can be set aside until you are ready to serve the salad.

Tear a pita in half and toast each half in the toaster on a medium setting. When the toasted pita is cool, tear it into bite-size pieces. If you are going to serve the entire salad at once, you can mix all the pita into the lettuce. If not, set some of it aside in an airtight container.

To serve the salad, spoon the cucumber mixture over the lettuce and pita bread, and then spoon hummus onto the salad. You may want to serve this dish with extra pita bread. Alternatively, you could leave the toasted pita out of the salad and stuff the ingredients inside of a pita for a sandwich.