The Hemp Connection:
kale

Someone on our Facebook page recently asked how you cook kale. And she asked at a perfect time, since we've been getting it almost weekly at Chow Locally, and I've been the one who's been curating recipes and techniques to keep our customers excited!

First of all, a bit about kale. It is actually a type of cabbage that never gets around to forming into a head. In this photo you see curly kale, which is one of the more popular kinds, what you often see used to make kale chips. It comes in a variety of colors and leaf shapes, all of which can be enjoyed!

Here are some of the great things kale can do for you.

1. It can lower your cholesterol.
2. It can lower your risk of cancer.
3. It is a great food for detoxification.
4. It is extremely high in antioxidants — over 45 have already been identified.
5. One cup cooked kale has 1328% of your RDA's for vitamin K, 354% for vitamin A, and 89% of vitamin C. And only 36 calories.

Now that is what I call nutrient dense!

For the longest time, I thought kale was just the pretty gray-green curly stuff you used to decorate party platters, but didn't really eat. Then antioxidants were discovered, and kale topped the charts, and people started deciding, maybe they should figure out how to eat it. It can be a bit of a challenge because it is bitter. Unless you are Kitty, who loves raw kale (this is white peacock kale here), it's best to know a few cooking techniques!

Here are some of the easiest ways to enjoy kale.

1. Juice it. There are a bazillion recipes for juicing kale on the Internet. I am linking you to just one here.

2. Massage it and eat it raw. Interestingly, kale's bitter flavor dials back a bit if you chop it, and massage it with some type of oil until the color pops green. Here is a great blog post with three massaged kale salad recipes, along with more ideas (colcannon, which is mashed potatoes and kale, is a recipe I sent to our customers with this week's box.)

3. Saute it. Super easy, as you can see in this recipe!

4. Make pesto with it. One week we got gorgeous purple peacock kale in our boxes, and it intimidated some of our customers. It's the same vegetable, just a different color, and to demonstrate, I made a purple pesto. You can make this exact same pesto with any kind of kale…curly, dinosaur, peacock, Toscano…because it's still kale!

5. Steam/wilt it. This is one of my all time favorite kale recipes, by Rachel Ray, steamed kale with portobello mushrooms. I often make this dinner!

6. Kale chips. This is all the rage right now. I'm giving you the recipe and I encourage you to try this with any sturdy greens you might have available — kohlrabi and beet have worked very well in my kitchen.
7. Braise it. Braising is a way to slow cook and infuse the flavor of a wine, vinegar, alcohol, broth, or other liquid. I just found this great salsa-braised kale recipe while surfing for this post…it is on my list to try!
I hope this gets you started! Let us know how you end up cooking yours!

Source: elanaspantry.com via Valerie on Pinterest

Kale is the new rage. I've even seen it hailed as The New Beef.

Problem is, for newbies to this green way of eating, kale is a bitter veggie to swallow.

I wanted to share some of my favorite ways to work with kale that get you out of the bitter and into the tasty zone!

1. Make chips! I put a photo album on our Facebook page showing you how to do this with pretty much any green, including kale. It's soooo easy!

2. Cook with Parmesan cheese. Cheese, for some reason, helps to take bitterness out of greens.

3. Massage with oil. I'm sharing a couple of links here to recipes describing tis technique, which is basically breaking down the membranes of the leaves with your hands while massaging in a little oil. The first recipe, Kale Salad with Grapefruit, and photo are from friend Valerie Griswold. The second recipe is for the popular kale avocado salad at Whole Foods, which is what I always encourage people to try if they have never had kale. The avocado does the job that the oil does in the previous recipe.

4. Throw a handful into smoothies! You won't taste it at all, and you'll still get the benefit of its goodness.

5. Add to soups. If I get close to the next weekly veggie box and I still have things I haven't used, I make soup. Kale is a great thing to throw in anything.

I promised I would report back on the broccoli chips experiment. This is a winner!

The recipe is super easy. Wash and tear kale or broccoli leaves into chip-sized pieces, pat dry with a towel. Spritz with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake in a 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes (10 was sufficient in my oven).

If you're a vegetable hater, seriously, try these chips. They'll win over even the biggest skeptic.

If you have any left over, crumble them over a salad or into some cooked rice or quinoa like herb sprinkles. It's a great flavor!

I have a little gadget in my kitchen that makes this recipe really easy. It's called a Misto Olive Oil Sprayer. Simply fill it with olive oil, pump it to build the pressure, and you can spray olive oil on your cooking project without the use of propellants.

It's that simple!

I love to promote kale in my Whole Foods classes. It has omega-3's, trytophan (building block for serotonin), magnesium, iron, calcium, copper, and zinc, to name a few. It's also a member of the Brassica family, that cancer-fighting clan with more popular cousins named garlic, broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts.

But I always get the same response (see deer in the headlights graphic). I know what's pumping through those brains…"Kale? Isn't that the pretty curly stuff lining the fruit and veggie platter? You can eat that?"

Yes, you can…and should…eat kale.

Here's a trick for you kale virgins, if you're not quite up to the task. Next time you make a smoothie, of any flavor, throw in a handful of kale. You won't even taste it. You can also throw it into your juicer.

If you want to actually taste kale, your next best step is to head to your nearest Whole Foods and try the kale salad which is a staple in their ready-to-eat case. That's how kale is supposed to taste, and according to those who have been on my Whole Foods tours who are encouraged to try the salad, it's pretty good!

Here are some kale recipes for those of you who did so well with steps one and two that you're ready to strike out into the Adventurous World of Kale.

Yesterday I found kale and portobello mushrooms deeply discounted at the store. I bought them both, since I try to eat kale whenever I can, and my own personal nutrition project is to eat more mushrooms. I hoped to find a recipe that incorporated them both, but figured if I couldn't, I'd be happy with portobello burgers and some kale chips.

I found this super easy recipe by Rachael Ray. This is what it looked like just before serving time. Isn't it beautiful?

Kale is one of nature's highest anti-oxidant vegetables, but it's not one I find many people naturally bring home from the store. They often have no idea what to do with it. Hope you like the recipe.

I still have enough kale left over for making chips. Yay!