Kale is by far one of my favorite vegetables. It grows year round in Michigan, thanks to hoophouse technology, is easy to cook, easy to grow, tastes delicious, and is incredibly nutritious. Did I mention how good kale tastes?
I know you love cherry tomatoes my faithful blog readers and market shoppers, and I must admit something. I do not. I’d take kale over cherry tomatoes any day. (Although I strongly encourage you to keep eating cherry tomatoes from The Farm…perhaps mixed with kale?).
Kale is available year round in Michigan, thanks to the protection of passive solar greenhouses.
Furthermore, Kale represents well during breakfast, lunch, and supper, and can be sautéed, boiled, steamed, thrown in soup, baked, and on and on. Speaking of baking kale, there has been a lot of chatter around our farmers market lately regarding kale chips. Every week I seem to have multiple conversations about one of my favorite foods cooked in one of my favorite ways.
I have serious salty snack cravings, especially at the gas station, and I must say that kale chips do fulfill my salty snack cravings in a healthy form. If only there was a vegetable with similar qualities as chocolate chip cookies.
Here’s a couple of recipes to check out.
We’ve tried these, but they end up being quite far from what one might consider a “chip”. How do you actually make these things crispy? We kept them in the oven twice as long as the recipe recommended and still had some pretty wilty kale on our hands.
PS: They’re a great way to get our 18 month-old son to eat kale. He loves these things.
I think the key is to make sure the leaves are completely dry. We pat them dry with a towel.
Hi Dan – Thanks for the shout-out to my kale chip recipe. We think a lot alike! There is a recipe for black bean brownies on my website (www.CancerRD.com), even if that is not quite the same as a vegetable with qualities similar to chocolate chip cookies. At least these yummy brownies are a teeny bit ‘heathy’. 🙂
Diana Dyer, MS, RD