Crunchy Vegetable Spirals

These crunchy vegetable spirals are one of my favorite go-to appetizers when I want something fresh, crunchy, and different.   Around the Christmas holidays, a few extra tiny squares of fresh red pepper sprinked over them complete the holiday look.  These crunchy vegetable spirals keep well for 3-4 days, which is a bonus, and you can vary the vegetables used to add your own personal favorites.  Use low carb tortillas to keep the carb count down!

I tend to keep it simple, with just 4 or 5 vegetables, but the possibilities are limited only by your flavor preferences and imagination.

Ingredients:

1 pkg. low carb flour tortillas

8 oz. pkg. of cream cheese, softened

2 Tsp. dry Hidden Valley Ranch dip mix

2 cups finely chopped broccoli

1/2 cup finely chopped colored pepper (plus extra for garnish)

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion or green onions

1/8 cup finely chopped carrot

[You could also use yellow squash, zucchini, mushrooms, jalapeños, purple cabbage, tomatoes, etc.  Go with what you like!]

Directions:

Finely chop all the vegetables.  Mix all the finely chopped vegetables together.

In a large bowl, mix together the softened cream cheese and the dry Hidden Valley mix (2 tsp.).  You can thin it a little bit with a splash of cream or milk, but it’s not really necessary.

Add the vegetables to the bowl that has  the cream cheese mixture and mix together with a sturdy spoon.

Spread the vegetable/cream cheese mixture onto the tortillas with a spreader or knife.  Roll into tight spirals.  Wrap with plastic wrap and allow to chill until firm before unwrapping and slicing into 1/2 inch rounds with a sharp knife or a pizza cutter.   (Oooooooh.  If you have one of those long/wide rocking pizza cutter blades, those really work great.)

Depending upon how thick you want it and the size of tortillas you are using, it will probably cover 3 or 4 tortillas.

Garnish with little bits of colored pepper.  Aren’t they pretty?  (I cut the perfectly uniform squares of red pepper “confetti” using the Genius Nicer Dicer.  What an awesome device!)

Note:  I’ve experimented with baking these for a short time (5-10 minutes at 350) and serving them warm.  While some of my friends prefer them that way, I am a bigger fan of the cool, fresh, crunchy version, particularly in the summer.