The Full Helping

Vegan Recipes | Made to Nourish

Raw Banana Breakfast Sushi

Breakfast

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Glad you all liked the balsamic tahini dressing! I’m still using up my leftovers, and loving it.

As I mentioned before embarking on my week of internet withdrawal, I’m now in D.C., spending some quality time with the boy before orientation and classes begin. This means quiet days, full of blogging, counseling, food making, and food eating. It has been nearly six years since I had this kind of idle time on my hands, and it feels great. I’m sure that, given another month or two of it, I’d be going stir crazy, but for now, it allows me to be pleasantly self indulgent. Especially when it comes to cooking.

You see, six years of 9-5 often pitted my creative impulses as a foodie against my career life. It’s not easy to come up with breakfasts and lunches that are creative and fun in the office kitchenette, or in the process of transporting food hither and yon in tupperware. I would often read food blogs written by women with unconventional working hours with a sense of envy, gazing wistfully at their perfectly tailored bowls of oats, neatly chopped and manicured salads, or—imagine!—hot lunches. Now, as I enjoy a very brief interim between 9-5 life and full time student/blogger life, it’s nice to experience, if only for a week, the fun of full time domesticity.

Case in point: these breakfast sushi. They’re surprisingly quick and easy to prepare, and in fact I think they’d make an excellent portable breakfast option for any busy working guy or gal, but I probably wouldn’t have thought to make them had I not been at home with some time on my hands. Creativity abounds when one has a little time in the kitchen! I’ll definitely be making these a staple, and wrapping them up to take to classes when they start.

Note that I used chard leaves for the sushi wrapper in this recipe. Collards, dino kale, and romaine leaves would all work just as well, though if you’re a little sensitive to the taste of greens I’d definitely recommend using chard, rather than collards. As with all raw leaf wraps, you’ll want to trim the stem quite a bit before wrapping, per the directions below!

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Breakfast Sushi (serves 1)

Ingredients

1 banana
1 large Swiss chard, collard, kale, or romaine lettuce leaf
1 tbsp almond butter
1 tsp agave nectar

Instructions

1) Cut the thickest part of the stem of your leaf wrapper out with a “V” shaped cut, like so:

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2) Spread the tablespoon of almond butter into the crease of the leaf:

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3) Drizzle it with about a teaspoon of agave—this is optional, but I liked it:

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4) Cut your banana in half, and layer it so that it’s straight in the center of the leaf:

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5) Fold up all of the edges bottom edges, and then and wrap it up neatly from right to left:

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6) Slice into 3-5 pieces (depending on the length) and enjoy!

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What an easy, tasty, and fun breakfast! I was totally charmed, and loved every bite:

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There are tons of ways to modify this recipe: use any nut butter you like, any other spread (I think an organic an all natural jam would be great), or layer in some dried fruits. I plan on making a version with raisins or dates soon! I also think it would be fun to try this with other fruits: apple slices and almond butter sound pretty great to me.

I’m so often asked what raw foodists (or semi-raw foodists) eat for breakfast, and this is as good a suggestion as any! It’s fast, tasty, all raw, and all vegan, and it’s a fun recipe to try with kids, too. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think!

xo

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  5. Oh my!! That breakfast looks so cute and yummy, very creative Gena! And I’m so jealous of your ‘idle’ time ;). Enjoy DC!

    Reply

  9. ok, this is definitely an interesting combination! I’m curious as to what this will taste like…But it surprises people when I tell them kale and swiss chard have really mild flavours. Actually, now that I think about it, the flavour of this breakfast probably isn’t that different my my banana smoothies, where I add in some kale!
    Anyways, enjoy your time off!

    Reply

  12. Cute idea, Gena! I normally just smear nut butter on a sliced-up banana for either me or Skylar but adding the piece of lettuce would prevent a mess (or hopefully) all over little kiddie hands. I will try this. Plus an extra piece of greenery makes it’s way into the mouth.

    Glad you are enjoying your time…I am happy for you that you have a chance to just….breathe. And get centered before you dive in full force to your studies!

    Be well! 🙂

    Reply

  15. This is a great idea!! Although I admit I’m still hesitant to be crunching on greens in the morning. I can put them in smoothies, but not sure about eating them whole. I’ll give anything a shot though and maybe spread some of yesterday’s carob fudge in the mix too! 🙂

    Reply

  16. I love these! This is one of my go to bfasts in the summer.. I even used to offer them for breakfast at my last job.. For those who are nervous about the greens, Boston Bibb Lettuce makes a lovely wrapper too.. although I am partial to collards myself.

    Reply

  20. What a fun an fabulous idea! I’m going to try it with some beet greens that I have leftover from my roasting last night of the beets for Leslie’s Roasted Beets with Cocoa Sesame Sauce (which was amazing I might add!). Maybe I can get my kids to eat them? Well, not likely. But I have a feeling this could be a great breakfast for me when I’m just not in the mood for a smoothie.

    Reply

  21. sounds awesome! when i had day long classes, i’d take a variation of that wrap as a snack. whole wheat tortilla smeared with almond butter, flax meal and a banana. this sounds like a great take on that wrap. thanks!

    Reply

  23. this is almost a green smoothie if you blended it up!

    i’ve seen raw foodies do this with romaine but collards or chard actually sounds more appealing to me. i’d probably do this as a snack.

    you deserve some down time with hot lunches and lavish breakfasts. we americans work too hard.

    Reply

  26. At first I looked at this and thought that bananas wrapped in anything green sounded so gross. Then I realized that what you have there is basically just a green smoothie in solid form, not so weird after all. Neat idea!

    Reply

  27. I’d eat it! And so would Gigi. Lulu? Not so sure. But I bet with dehydrated fruit “leather” for the outside, she’d be all over it!

    Enjoy your downtime, girl.

    Reply

  30. Ooo, i love this idea! I’ve never been a huge fan of raw chard, i’ll try this with collards instead, for some reason they have a sweeter flavor to me. I’d probably also add a date in there and maybe tahini instead of almond butter. Thanks for the recipe!

    Reply

  31. Glad you’re enjoying the bit of downtime: those times are few and far between with school, for sure.

    Lovely bfast idea, simple and well-balanced. Wouldn’t it be great with some cinnamon also, or other spices?

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  34. I thought I’d invented these – I use Boston lettuce and raw honey – and I eat ’em for dinner, not breakfast. But YUM.

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  36. Right, I *will* get my mind out of the gutter and stop giggling at some of those photos soon. I will, I will…

    What a marvellous idea! I’m still a bit tentative about the texture of raw banana, after spending most of my life hating it, and seeing as it’s summer here I might give these a go with froen banana. To make, erm, Raw Frozen Banana Sushi Ice-Cream Pops?

    Reply

  43. I think that almond butter with salt and honey (sigh, I know it’s not vegan) tastes as good as caramel dip! I should try it wrapped in greens!

    Reply

  47. Gena,

    I have never commented on your site before but after making the banana rolls, with plenty of doubt, I have to say how awesome you are for inventing these! B and I both can’t get enough of them! Thank you for being so creative and making my family happy and healthy at the same time.

    Reply

  49. Can’t wait to try this one! If I’d been told I would drool at the thought of green-clad bananas…
    (First time commenting, even though I’ve been following CR for a while now, and enjoying many of its culinary gems. Thanks a lot for sharing your recipes and thoughts with us reading lot!)

    Reply

  50. What a fabulous idea. I’ve done the green smoothie thing, and while i like the taste, for some reason I amnever quite satisfied with just a drink for a meal, but this is babsically the same only I get to actually chew it. I am trying to make some major changes to my diet and right now am pretty much failing. I have an almost 3 year old and twins who jsut turned 2, so I am looking for healthy quick meals for all of us. I am also working on getting my family at least me and my husband, to go vegan. I’d love to incorporate a lot of raw in there too!

    Reply

  52. Just tried these as a mini version – with bananas from my own yard (which have been frozen) and collards out of my front yard. I’m now wondering how long I could get them to store in the fridge to use as a running-out-the-door breakfast if I made them up say, on a Sunday afternoon. Any thoughts would be appreciated! (I am totally planning on doing banana, dried cherry, chocolate nut butter as a variation – mmmm!)

    Reply

  57. We tried this recipe this morning for breakfast. Another home-run! We travel a lot in our little VW RV, and this would be a perfect/easy breakfast to make in our tiny kitchen.

    Thanks to you, we’ve now found a couple new breakfast ideas that we love. Thank you! Can’t wait to try some more of your suggestions!

    Reply

  58. I’m not a vegan but I do watch my diet closely and love to try out healthy recipes. This one actually surprised me in terms of how tasty it was! Thanks for sharing :).

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  59. Hi! I usually do this as a salad, but this seemed and also turned out to be very practical! I doubled the recipe though… I don’t know how you guys do it, I just can’t function on so little breakfast. I had endive in the fridge, so I used that and folded them like you would a burrito (left out the sweetener), took ’em with me and had breakfast on the train to work. It got me a few stares and surprised looks (though no one would bat an eye at a sixteen year old boy having two croissants, a chocolate muffin, and a can of red bull for breakfast), but who cares.
    Liked it a lot!

    Reply

  61. Always looking for new ways to eat collards/leafy greens! Awesome idea! Thank you for sharing 🙂

    Reply

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