Long ago, in a far away land, I went to college. When my mother drove me there . . . ooooooo. Well, she had spent about two hours between me standing in line to get my keys and then carrying things up to my third floor room. Then we ran into town to set up a bank account for me, run an errand, and dashed back to campus in time for the welcoming speeches for orientation. There we were surrounded by new, incoming Hanpshire-ites (who actually LIKE being called "Hampsters" - Hee, hee.), older students who were there to lead Orientation activities, and of course, staff and faculty. My mother spent most of THAT hour looking around, with her jaw visibly hanging open, at the students and incoming students and their distinctive images and appearance, shall we say. At the end of this she said, "I've always taught you not to talk to strangers, and now I just don't know what to tell you." (Ha! As an important note, when I graduated, my mom had come full circle on this. Hampsters don't walk across the graduation stage in cap and gowns; they wear what they want. And BOY DO THEY. My mom took three or four pictures of me, and about 37 of the fellow graduates saying, "I hope you don't mind, but for me it's a little like going to the circus!")
Hampshire College is a place that encourages and supports extreme individuality (I say that knowing I'm bringing to mind "extreme sports." It's intentional - Hampshire is a glorious, and extreme place. Worthy of another post unto itself . . . oh yeah, I've been working on that post for nigh unto 3 months now. . . so stick a pin in that). It does this in terms of educational philosophy and curriculum, as well as in other ways. What's hilarious is that from pretty much the moment that I entered kindergarten I was very obviously, "that girl who's a little different" in my K-12 school experiences, and in comparison at Hampshire, I was something of a subversive because I was so "mainstream." I found very quickly that the ways I had tested the boundaries and pushed the envelope were not so great as those of my new peers. I hadn't taken a year off to hike Europe, I had never dyed my hair or made my own clothing from natural fibers, I hadn't quit high school in favor of homeschooling myself so that I could do MORE, I hadn't published anything, and I had to ask someone what kale was! I went to a vegetarian potluck and was thrilled about the rice salad, the grilled corn and roasted red pepper salad, the stuffed zucchini, but, "what's this green stuff? Spinach?"
A few years later, I moved out of the dorms and into Hampshire's on-campus smaller setting housing (I hesitate to call them "apartments" because they are generally shared with 5-8 people. Which is a lot. But they have kitchens and living rooms. Which was what I was looking for at the time) and my "mod-mates" and I split a share of Hampshire's farm. I want to say that for a semester's worth of vegetable we each chipped in something like $30-40 dollars. The catch with farm shares is that you get whatever portion you get of whatever has been harvested. It's not like you go in and say, "I want tomatoes, garlic and zucchini this week." Early on we got a few strawberries, tomatoes, and things like broccoli, basil, and onions. Even fresh flowers one week! But once we got into November and December, the winter vegetables populated our share - sweet potatoes, other roots, and lots and lots of kale. I used to go pick up the share, take the kale, and just stick it gingerly in the fridge and hope fervently that the adorably young, hippie, dancing student we lived with would know what to do with it. Often times she picked up on the silent brain-wave from me and obliged.
But, I also was part of a group that met every Monday with a potluck dinner attached to our meeting. And so, finally, inevitably, it was an early December afternoon and I had been so busy finishing math assignments (another thing that branded me as subversively "normal" at Camp Hamp), planning my teaching, and writing a chapter of my thesis that I hadn't had time to plan what I would bring to the potluck. In the back of my mind I thought, "I'm sure that we have some corn chips and cheese . . . ??" No. I descended to the kitchen and found no crackers to put peanut butter on, no corn chips, no sweet potatoes I could quickly roast or mash, aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE. (I made this noise in my head A LOT that year as I balanced being engaged with work with teaching AND writing a thesis. Sometimes in excitement and other times in utter, flat-spin-esque PANIC.) Ok, self, what DO we have. Well, we have kale. A quick walk down the hall to knock on Sara-dancer-girl's door, "Umm, what can you tell me about kale."
I think she saw the anxiety in my face because I remember distinctly her pausing for a quick beat before saying, "Why don't you just steam it lightly and then borrow some tahini from me to serve with it for the Counselor Advocates." (I might not've known what all of our vegetables were when we got our weekly share portions, but one of the things I had done for our mod/flat was to create a calendar/board thingy so that we could communicate the 28 different directions we were all going in at all times and be sensitive to what was going on in each other's lives. Ahhhh Organization, my long-time companion.)
I did just this, and all of the vegans at my meeting DELIGHTED at my offering. I was kind of like, "Umm, ohhhh-kaaayyy." But here's why: first, I'm not a vegan. Second: I ADORE vegetables. I have always felt this way. Mushrooms, asparagus, salads, bring it on. My parents never had to negotiate with me to get me to eat my veggies. With only two exceptions: not a fan of beets. Aaaaaand, I don't like cooked cabbage. Well, kale is a form of cabbage.
Fast-forward many years, and here I am in Boulder. If ever there was a place MORE dedicated to local, farmers-market, veggie-full eating than Hampshire, here it is. I am a long way from Kansas, as it were - in my first month living here alone I encountered kale 4 times. (And while I didn't think, "ewww" I also wasn't like, "Oh, I'm definitely getting THAT.")
But, the story doesn't end there. I have wonderful, entertaining, health-minded, whip-smart friends, and two that live in Jersey mentioned kale or cooked it in foods I was sharing with them. One of them is the "Ima" (mom) in my Jewish family, and when I returned to visit, she had kale in a soup for the start of the Shabat meal. I thought, "hmmm, kale. Perhaps I have judged you unfairly." Another is perhaps the most entertaining person I know in real life. She revels in making fun of stereotypes and can often be found discussing how, as a lesbian woman, she knows she is expected to eat kale and bang her tambourine with tabbouleh and quinoa flying out of it. (Biggest giggle of all.) She also posted a recipe for kale salad on FB.
Eureka!!
Simple, not cooked, fresh ingredients, come to meeeeeeeee. I made this salad last summer because I needed a break from lettuce and cucumber based salads and didn't want to cook vegetables. Very quickly, kale became something written in bold, all-caps on my grocery list each week. In fact, when I lost my job and started planning my budget down to the tiniest detail, I cut many things out of my grocery list, of course. But what was remarkable were the things I cut from my grocery list specifically IN ORDER TO SAVE KALE.
If you had told me that the year before, I would have bet money on the opposite result. But, here is the thing, despite all of the hype about super foods (we hear it hawked at us all the time. Acai! Pomegranites! Brussel Sprouts!) kale is pretty much a super-hero. It has a great anti-oxidant profile (of course) but it's also a green so it can stand in for lettuce or spinach, but pound for pound has massive amounts more of fiber. It also has high amounts of absorbed calcium, vitamin C, B6, potassium, and folic acid. (Read: my friend was right in that lesbians should eat kale, but not because they love women; instead, because they ARE women.) Kale is profiled as helping to prevent cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol and blood-pressure and osteoporosis (Psssst! The leading disease threats for women in the U.S. are cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Cello.) Most of us would have to eat a stir fry of vegetables to get all of that, and then something separate to get the eye-health promoting lutein and folic acid kale also has. See? Superstar.
But, since kale was a little intimidating for me, I had a knowing nod and smile when my good friend posted yesterday, "I'm never intimidated by any vegetable (or most food for that matter) but I bought kale at the grocery store this weekend and I'm ascared of it!" Kale is wonderful and amazing, but I too had some not great introductory experiences with it. One feels a little like they need to either MAKE themselves eat this power green, or like they need to be credentialed by the Food Network as an expert or something to unlock the tastiness of it.
So, I'm here to tell my friend (and I suppose all of you, also) that kale need not be feared. First, think of it as being tougher (as in, able to withstand more handling, cooking, etc. ) than lettuce, but milder than spinach. Thusly, it will seem like something you can add to pasta, soups, or stir fries much more easily in your head, instead of some elite vegetable that you place gently in your fridge and hope someone else eats (as I once did). Secondly, unless you really LIKE steamed vegetables or tahini, let us give my former friend and roomate Sara-the-dancer her due for bailing me out of a jam, but don't steam it and eat with with tahini. You will feel like a vegan, and then you'll begin to worry that you need to BE vegan in order to appreciate kale. In my experience this is followed closely by a panic of, "If I'm a vegan, I can't eat cheese! If I can't eat cheese, then I can't have cheese-fries. Why would I ever give up cheese-fries for KALE? aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE! " So, no, no tahini. Don't set kale up as the enemy of bar food. That's not a winning strategy.
Next up, when buying kale, you march yourself bravely into the produce section, and don't worry about the people in hemp clothing! You have just as much right to that kale as them! Fourth, I prefer the flat-leaf or "dinosaur" kale, but whatever you get, it should be such a deep green it should almost have hues of blue and purple in it. And finally, kale is listed on the "dirty dozen" of produce that is high in pesticides. Here's the gig, as I see it: even if you're buying organic, we all need to acknowledge that labeling things as organic is a business, and there's big money in it. There's a list of CHEMICAL pesticides approved for use in certified organic farms, and they aren't necessarily less harmful than those used by non-organic farms. Buy local if you can, but whatever you do, let's all just agree that thoroughly washing our produce is something that's part of life now, mm-kay? (As a sidenote, I will note that like lettuce and spinach, your leafy, deep green-blue kale will last longer in your fridge if you don't wash it until you're using it and it's dry in it's little bag in your crisper drawer.)
Now, eat some yummy kale. (DO EEEEEEETTTT!)
Here are my recommendations:
Kale Salad (courtesy of the lovely and indomitable T-budd): Kale, grape tomatoes, pine nuts, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper (scallions, carrots, feta optional)
Cut the kale into thin ribbons, almost chiffonade. Then I cut those in half cross-wise so they are more fork-able. Cut your little tomatoes in halves and thirds. Add to bowl. Mix well and add pine nuts to taste. Squeeze a whole lemon over the salad (I use bottled juice in a pinch but an actual lemon makes a taste difference for me) and add about 1.5-3 tblsps of olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. (Add chopped scallion and/or shredded carrots and/or crumbled feta to change up this salad). I eat some version of this almost every week.
Kale Soup (courtesy of Allrecipes): Now, almost all of my winter soups go like this - oil, onions, whole spices or fresh ground spices, saute, then add either carrots or bell peppers and bay leaves, then add broth, beans or lentils, salt, other spices and herbs, boil, simmer. (I add other "secret" ingredients to dress up soups depending on which one I'm making. Beer, mustard, lemons, fresh rosemary, etc.) Kale can be added to any one of those soups. It can also be made in the recipe in this link with sausage, beans, potatoes, and hot peppers.
Kale chips: Kale, oil spray, mixed spices of your choosing, oven.
Admission - kale chips have horrified and worried me for some time, even after my kale-conversion. My cousin oven baked some this year and then tagged me in her FB post describing them as having dried out and turned to "salty dust." Ugh. I felt almost responsible since I had been touting my kale-love-affair on FB for many moons at that point. Also, store-bought kale chips are groddy and expensive. aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!
My awesome friend Lauren (I think she is a Hampster at heart, though she attended a different college) turned me around on this one just a couple of days ago.
Set oven to 375-400 degrees. Spray a baking tray lightly. Cut the spines out of your kale leaves, and lay the halves down on the tray. Spray them lightly. Sprinkle with you spice mix of choice (We used Savory Spices "Capitol Hill Blend" which has shallots, salt, pepper, chives and parsley in it but I could have used salt and lemon pepper, the pesto blend, or many others . . . and probably will begin experimenting!). Flip the leave halves over and repeat this process on the other side. Place in pre-heated oven for about 5-8 minutes, You want them to make a crunchy sound when you bight them but not be fall-apart-baked-to-death. After we reached minute five we began checking them each minute in order to hit just the right amount of bake-age but not go overboard.
Kale stir fry: vegetable oil, low sodium soy sauce, fresh ginger finely chopped, scallions, garlic, white pepper, meat of choice (we use cheap boneless chicken), kale leaves chopped coarsely, veggies of choice (the best blend so far have been mushrooms, bell peppers, and broccoli)
I marinate the chicken cubes in a bowl with a medium amount of vegetable oil and soy sauce with some white pepper and a sprinkle of chopped ginger, add oil to a skillet/wok and then quickly saute the ginger, garlic, and scallions. Then I add the protein, reserving the "sauce", and add vegetables according to how fast they cook (mushrooms last because they cook down faster, kale in the middle, things like carrots or broccoli at the beginning since they cook slower. ) Add sauce at the end, serve over rice noodles.
Things I plan to try:
Kale with pasta: pasta, kale leaves, garlic, tomatoes, feta, olive oil, pine nuts
Add some cut tomatoes and torn kale to cooked pasta (spirals? orrechiette?), lightly roast pine nuts in olive oil and sauteed garlic, add to pasta, sprinkle with feta.
Kale with apples: kale, green and tart apples, walnuts or almonds, balsamic vinegar.
Braise kale leaves and apples lightly, garnish with chopped nuts, add a splash of balsamic. YUM!
So, although this post is really a gift for my friend (be not ascared of kale, chicca! I overcame and transcended my first impressions and you can too!) I hope this will also help some of you embrace my new favorite green friend. Also (shameless pug), please share your kale recipes with me!
