My Go-To Recipe When My Attention Span Makes It Impossible to Cook

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Healthline Eats is a series looking at our favorite recipes for when we're just too exhausted to nourish our bodies. Want more? Check out the full list here.

As someone with his fair share of mental health challenges, I don't always have the bandwidth to cook. Sometimes a bout of depression has me moving at a snail's pace. Other times, my short attention span makes it difficult to create anything too complicated.

Not going to lie... these wraps were born out of literal desperation. My body was screeching, 'VEGETABLES! VEGETABLES!' and my mental illness responded, 'Too much work. Try again later.'

This was my compromise: Take some vegetables and hummus, and throw it on some flatbread. Boom. Veggie wrap.

Veggie Hummus Wrap

Ingredients

• 1 prepackaged salad
• 1 flatbread
• 1 container of hummus

Directions

1. Take your flatbread and add a good helping of hummus to each one. I chose hummus here because I'll never pass up an excuse to eat hummus, but also, the added protein will help make this meal more filling.
2. Select whatever prepackaged salad sounds tasty to you. I'm a fan of Trader Joe's Southwest Salad, but you do you, boo! I pitch the dressing personally, but I go ahead and add all the other components of the salad to my flatbread.
3. Wrap it up. You're done, kiddo. A makeshift veggie wrap with no fuss.

Time and serving size This 'recipe' takes just a few seconds to assemble (bless — my ADHD can't handle much longer than that). In terms of serving size, my suggestion is to eat a lot. Whatever that means for you. Because more than likely, if you're struggling mentally or emotionally, you're not eating enough. Trust me.

Prepackaged salads by themselves never feel like quite enough to be filling, but combining them with other things has been my saving grace and basically my sole source of vegetables when times get tough.

Don't be afraid to get creative (and yes, you have my permission to be 'lazy') with how you use them!

Sam Dylan Finch is a leading advocate in LGBTQ+ mental health, having gained international recognition for his blog, Let's Queer Things Up!, which first went viral in 2014. As a journalist and media strategist, Sam has published extensively on topics like mental health, transgender identity, disability, politics and law, and much more. Bringing his combined expertise in public health and digital media, Sam currently works as social editor at Healthline.