What to do with kale?

Here's an African approach to kale, and it's dellicious!

What you need to feed 4 hungry 4hourPeeps:

1 onion

3 tablespoons oil

500g kale (chopped)

½ cup vegetable broth

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 garlic clove

1 hot pepper

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons peanut butter

Peel the onions and sweat them in hot oil. Add the kale, sweat it and deglaze it with the broth.

Adjust the cooking time to your personal liking, I prefer not too long so there's some crunch left.

Peel the garlic, chop together with the pepper and add it along the other spices.

Add the peanut butter shortly before you take it off the stove and mix it in - there you go!

I guess you could serve this very smoothly with some meat on the side for the protein.

Hope you like it!

ok seriously - this recipe is sooo good, I highly recommend it.

Esalen Kale Salad

The simple kale salad dressing features three key ingredients: tamari soy sauce, lemon juice and olive oil. This dressing marinates the kale and breaks down the tough and slightly bitter vegetable. Like lemon juice in ceviche the dressing transforms the kale almost like cooking while maintaining the crunchy integrity of the leaves. Toasted sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds give the salad additional texture and crunch, while only taking fifteen minutes to prepare.

⅓ cup Bragg Liquid Aminos or tamari soy sauce

⅓ cup lemon juice

⅓ cup flax seed oil or extra-virgin olive oil

½ medium red onion

¼ cup sunflower seeds

¼ cup pumpkin seeds

¼ cup sesame seeds

1 pound fresh kale

½ cup sunflower sprouts

½ cup alfalfa sprouts

1 avocado diced (optional - but will go bad faster if added)

serves: 4-6 (stays good for several days)

prep time: 35 minutes

Combine the Bragg or soy sauce and lemon juice in a blender or whisk in a bowl. Slowly dribble in the oil as the blender turns or as you whisk vigorously. Slice the onion into half moons and marinate in the dressing as you prepare the rest of the salad.

Toast the seeds in a heavy bottomed pan (cast-iron is the best) over medium heat until seeds are just golden and fragrant. Toast each seed type separately as their size requires varying roasting times. Cool to room temperature.

De stem the kale. Slice kale leaves into ¼ inch ribbons (very important!)

Toss the seeds, spouts, and kale with the onions, and as much dressing as necessary to lightly but complete

I eat Kale almost every day. Sometimes I steam a bunch of it and keep it in the fridge and warm it up as I cook my eggs in the morning. Other times, I sauté it with garlic and mushrooms in olive oil.I like it better that spinach at this point. Kids will eat it with anything.

I like to use it in breakfast omlettes. First I fry some bacon, then I add kale and chopped onions and garlic to some of the remaining bacon fat (too much and I just feel gross, so i pour off about 80% of it), along with the crumbled bacon, sautee until the kale is nice and wilted, set it aside and put it in the omlette.

I just finished lunch and had kale in my salad. Here was my salad.

Romane Lettuce

1 large kale leaf, stripped from the stem and cut into small pieces

handfull of spinach

5 oz of salmon (from dinner two nights ago) flaked

1/2 cup black beans (large container in the fridge lasts me the week)

tomato

cucumber

a sprinkle of parmesan

a dash of montreal steak spice

olive oil

Toss it all together, so yummy!!!!

I've made kale chips too. You have to be carefull with the oil, they can easily get saturated and don't taste as good. I cook mine on low heat at 250*F for 1 hour. Dash of paresan on them is really nice.

A lot of people make smoothies with kale in it, but most smoothies are not SCD complient as they have fruit in them as well as yogurt.

I second the Kale chip suggestion! Cut up a bunch of leaves without stems, and toss them with a light amount of olive oil and salt. (REALLY be careful with the salt. It takes much less than you would think.)Bake them until they are a consistency you like... Sometimes I like them really brittle, so I cook for longer. Sometimes chewy, and cook them for less times. I also have tried with macadamia oil, but like the olive oil flavour much more!

I find that I don't even need to coat the pan, because the olive oil stops them from sticking. I also don't use any nutritional yeast, just kale and oil (or vinegar with a bit of oil). Make sure they are not overlapping eachother, or else they will just be hot, soggy pieces of kale... yuck.

Another yummy alteration, try tossing them in vinegar and sprinkling salt after they have been layed on the pan. Tastes like salt and vinegar chips!

sooo yummy. and totally guilt free (as long as your not loading them up with sodium!)

Enjoy!

This is by no means a brilliant way to eat kale, but I recently noticed baby kale in the packages salad section of the store. I have been buying that and using in my salad. It's much easier to eat raw than regular kale. Although I have not made kale chips yet, I think these would work well and it would not be require to rip/shred the leaves first.