Cooking: A High-Fiber and Delish Alternative to Bagel + Lox

I love having lox for breakfast but I'm sometimes deterred by the denseness and heavy carbs of the bagel it usually comes with. While I love me a great bagel (with everything on it, of course), I like to switch things up once in a while and use wheat toast or lavash bread (Armenian flat bread) to similar effect.

A while ago, I ran into an hors d'oeuvres recipe for a lavash roll that only added cream cheese, arugula and pickled ginger (the kind served at sushi joints). I served it at parties and it was a huge crowd pleaser for the creamy and tangy flavor combinations that sounds gross but was really good. Somewhere along the way, my sister improvised by adding smoked salmon to the mix. A natural extension, right?

And so the alternative lox sandwich was born. I was elated to find that the whole wheat lavash bread I got had a whopping 18g of dietary fiber!

They're so easy to make, taste great and are a great start to a long day of work or outdoor activities. I went a step further and experimented with a bunch of different combinations, adding red leaf lettuce, perilla leaves, avocado, cucumbers and pickled sliced jalapenos (basically anything I had in my fridge). Or if you don't  have much, just cream cheese and salmon works (pictured left).

To make (or assemble, really), cut a large piece of lavash bread off, spread cream cheese in a rectangular area (I used low-fat that tasted just as good), place whatever ingredients you have, smoked salmon (I used wild Alaskan sockeye salmon -- thank you Costco!), pickled ginger, avocado, cucumber and jalapenos and roll it up. Then slice them into once-inch rolls and enjoy! I had mine with an over-easy egg, which went well. Then again, I could have a fried egg with anything and it'd taste good.