and some chips for kicks

If there's one vegetable that never had enough appeal for me to try, it was kale. It reminded me of seaweed's naggy stepmother, and who wants to deal with that?

But then I discovered I actually liked seaweed, which, according to philosophy 102, therefore meant that I should like kale. But then I looked up both seaweed and kale, and WHAT?! They're not even related. Off the hook. Chain. Whatever.

Then I told myself to take my thumb out of mouth and just freaking try kale. So I did, and maybe I had some help.

A Full Circle Farmer plucked that kale for me, gently put it my bi-weekly order, and sent it off my way. "Kale swing my waaay, surrre look gooood to meee." I'm so thankful I can suppress my food frights until someone else force feeds them to me. It's as if they know I'm not a food waster, and would rather kiss Jack Nicholson square on the lips (gag) before I throw away veggies.

After making these, I'm excited to try them raw in salad form. Kale is slightly sweet with a rougher texture that I could imagine would nicely accompany other types of greens.

So I made those. The green things, named Kale Chips. And I have zero regrets, namely because:

1. They are light and crisp and you feel like your eating salty air, but they are packed full of nutrients and not air so you don't have to worry about how much Gas-X you have left.

 2. THEY ARE REALLY GOOD!

3. They taste great dipped in that Caesar dressing or by themselves.

Kale Chips
(double the recipe if you want some leftovers, because one bunch was gone between 2 people in our house.)

-1 large bunch of kale
-3 tablespoons olive oil
-as much salt as you would like


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees; line a baking sheet with tinfoil if you're neat like that.

2. Wash and blot your kale dry; tear off the leaves from the hard stalk in the middle; discard the stalks and tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces, placing them in a large bowl.

3. Pour the olive oil over the kale leaves in the bowl, and massage the oil in with your hands; make sure you coat all the leaves so they'll crisp up.

4. Dash on the salt.

5. Scatter the leaves onto the baking sheet in a single sheet; if they're are piled on they will steam and get soft and that's not what we're going for.

6. These guys takes about 10 minutes to cook, but keep on eye on them. I flipped mine over at 5 minutes, which may not be necessary.

Pin It