Super{kale}ifragalistic

Every food blog and health site you look at today will have at least one recipe that involves the use of kale. A hearty, deep rich green that comes in a few different varieties, it's full of beta carotene, Vitamins K and C and a reasonably good source of Calcium. Additionally, it contains sulforaphene which is a chemical with anti-cancer properties; especially when chopped or minced. However, if you've ever tried to eat it raw, as in a salad or just popping a leaf in your mouth, you better have super-saliva and even then you'd be chewing for awhile.

One way that I've heard everyone raving about preparing them is by making kale chips. Essentially, you take the leaves off of the central stem and rip them into bite sized pieces, arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and, for the most basic preparation, drizzle with olive oil and a little sea salt. Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes et voila! You have crispy little leaves that really do crackle in your mouth. Smitten Kitchen even goes a step further and pulverizes some of the chips to a powder and sprinkles it over popcorn which would make a fiber-rich snack. (Speaking of Smitten Kitchen-I popped over to get the link for the kale, and found this as today's recipe. Apples and Salted Caramel?! Sign me up!)

Even though I've read about it everywhere, I had yet to try the chips and had only had kale itself when at a friend's house they used it. We went to Portland to cheer J on in his first full marathon a couple of weekends ago, so my girlfriends and I got the fams together for a potluck and one of them brought a kale salad. When she said it was kale, in my head I thought-how in the hell long am I going to have to chew to get that down?! I was so wrong. First, the leaves were cut super tiny, maybe half-inch pieces. Secondly, the dressing was uh-mazing, and it was wet enough that it helped with the robustness of the kale. We were having chicken tacos, so I took a serving of the salad and put it on the tortilla, then added a dollop of sour cream and some of the chicken. Wrapping up the whole she-bang, the kale added a great crisp texture without being hard to manage. I had seconds with just the salad and it was so good. I had to have the recipe.

When we got home, I was going through H's school backpack and found the 'Nutrition Nuggets' newsletter that gets sent home each week. On the front page was a recipe for kale chips. Okay, okay, I get it-I'll incorporate kale into our menu. I set out to a market near my house that I've never been to even though everyone raves that it has the best produce in town. When I got there I found that not only were they right about the produce, but that this place was bulk bin heaven! So, in addition to two big heads of curly kale, I also ended up at home with a bag of cherry yogurt covered pretzels and some banana chips for fun after-school snacks.

This weekend was J's monthly drill, which means I'm a solo parent each month for at least a weekend (in addition to his normal odd schedule), so I decided to try both kale recipes. The kale chips took less than 25 minutes from start to finish, including baking time. While I really liked them, I had my kids try them and H's verdict was, with a touch of disdain, 'this tastes like salad.' Um, because it is. 

I didn't want to make an entire adult meal for just myself, so the salad seemed like it would hit the spot. The best part is that because the kale is so hearty, it can sit dressed in your refrigerator for more than one day without getting soggy. I remembered my friend saying that the dressing used more ginger than you would think-when I got the recipe, that was actually what it said 'Peeled ginger root-more than you would think.'

 I took a gamble and used a big chunk that filled my palm, second guessing myself about five times before I just hit the pulse button on the food processor and it was perfection. For lunch, I filled my plate with the salad, and a slice of crusty french bread-At dinner, I fed the kids and got them to bed then assembled a wrap made with a slice of roasted turkey breast and the salad. You'd think I'd be sick of it, but I had the same wrap for lunch today.

This morning as I was folding the gynormous pile of laundry that I washed and dried yesterday, I was listening to Rachel Ray (because I have developed issues with watching her overacting, it's the perfect show to have on in the background-great ideas, obnoxious hand gesturing. Also, while I know she's made a lot of money on her cook and bakeware, the shapes seem counterintuitive and horribly impractical for actual use and service. There, I said it.) and she made a lentil soup with sausage and kale for her segment on cooking for the week. That sounds like a perfect hearty fall soup (thank god, she didn't call it a stoup, or I'd have turned the channel before I saw how delicious it was) to serve with a loaf of warm beer bread on a busy school night. 

Kale Salad with Ginger Dressing

1 head kale, leaves removed from stem and chopped into rough 1/2 inch pieces

1 carrot peeled and shredded

slivered or sliced almonds (about 1/4 cup)

Dressing: 

In bowl of food processor puree:

4 cloves of garlic

large chunk of peeled ginger root

1/8 cup each of: Honey, Soy Sauce, Lemon Juice and Apple Cider Vinegar

As the food processor is going, drizzle in 1/2 c. of olive oil, then pour the whole mixture over the kale salad and toss so that the entire salad is generously coated in the dressing. This salad holds up well and is actually better after being dressed for at least an hour.

Please note: this is not a first date salad. Nor is it a 'let's get busy later' salad. In addition to being ginger and garlic-tastic all the hearty greens make for some interesting GI issues, so Jared is probably glad he wasn't here last night anyhow. In case you wanted to know.

Why So Glum, Sugar Plum?

This week I purchased a half-box of organic emperor plums through a facebook group for local produce and gardens. People post their abundance, and you have the chance to buy fairly inexpensively before it's going, going, gone. I clearly had no idea how much a half-box of plums would be. Nor do I have a cache of plum recipes that I've been dying to use. Or really even know how to process plums, but that's just how I roll. When I met the owner she told me that she'd given me more than half a box because they were getting pretty ripe so her husband picked extra.

Sweet, now I not only had an abundance, but a pretty tight time frame to use them before they started to go bad and I'd wasted them. Last year, I got a beautiful box of peaches with the intent to can them and went back about a week and a half later to look at them in the garage and found a goopy, moldy mess...I did not want to repeat that mistake.

Pinterest is a girl's best friend, so I entered 'plum dessert' into the search box and saw that Smitten Kitchen had posted a Plum Kuchen recipe. I knew I'd heard my husband talk about kuchen as a treat from his childhood, so I mentally filed that one away. 

My neighbor suggested that I dry some, which would be awesome if I had a food dryer. Luckily, another neighbor of mine did, and graciously let me use it. Since these are gigantic plums, I could only use every other rack, so after filling the dehydrator I still had a lot of plums left. This box of plums was a like a giant plate of spaghetti-no matter how many I used, there seemed to be the same amount left. 

Let's hope these taste better than they look!

I processed several of them in boiling water and removed the skins and pits to puree for baby food. It's just four short months until we're back into the world of introducing solid foods, and I figured we could also use the puree in smoothees. In order to store it easily, I filled paper cupcake liners with the puree on a jelly roll pan and then froze them. Once solid, I removed the paper liner and put the puree discs in a gallon ziploc bag.

While I was elbow deep in plum goo, my husband said 'You could make kuchen!' I told him about the recipe I'd found and he looked at it to confirm what some of the comments had already revealed; this was not the traditional kuchen that people from middle america would call their own. After googling custard kuchen we found a blog called Through the Garden Gate, which specified a German-Russian kuchen, and it was just as my husband remembered. A yeast dough crust pressed into a pie plate, layered with fruit and then a rich custard gets ladled over the top, sprinkled with cinnamon and baked to golden perfection. In addition to the plums, I had enough rhubarb from the crazy starts that took off immediately that I could make a rhubarb version as well.

The dough has doubled-I used a wooden spoon to mix it, because you just have to make sure all of the flour is moistened.

Four plum and two rhubarb...I think next time I'd use more rhubarb,  but the plums were perfect!

waiting to go into a 350 oven...

The recipe turned out great, even though it was short on direction-for example, I've never cooked a custard on the stovetop before, so I didn't know to what thickness I should be stirring it before removing from the heat. Mine wasn't thick enough because I had to bake the kuchen for an extra ten minutes before the custard was set. However, the desired result was achieved, and my house smells like rich, eggy french toast. 

What was the verdict? I thought they were delicious, but they weren't exactly the custard kuchen that J remembered from his North Dakota boyhood. Not that he was unkind enough to tell me that after I'd spent the better part of a day researching and trying to recreate his childhood memories, but whatev', a girl can tell. I've recruited recipes from his aunt and sister so that I can try, try again. After, that is, we consume the FIVE desserts that this produced. Thank god for that garage freezer!

As for the plums in the food dryer, I was kind of over the quiet whirring and they were fairly dry, so a big portion of them went into the freezer, and the rest will be eaten over the next couple days.

I don't know if I'll ever perfectly replicate the kuchen. I know my dad still waxes poetic over his mom's apple butter, even when he tastes a batch made from the same recipe. Have you ever tried to re-create a childhood favorite for your beloved? I'd love to hear about it!

The Sox

Since I'm all caught up in my knitting queue (who'd have ever thought I'd say that?!), I started to make a holiday gifting list. There are a few people I'd love to make a pair of socks for, but I wanted them to be something other than a standard pair of socks. Serendipity intervened and my inbox had a message from Knitting Daily. The next knit-along was going to be a pair of socks and the poll was open to vote for the pattern. I cast my vote and voila-one week later the pattern I wanted won, so I made my purchase, chose my yarn and logged onto the forum.

In a couple weeks (they give a month, and I usually take a week of evening knitting to finish a pair of socks, so I'm splitting the difference) I should have finished a pair of these lovelies, knit in a beautiful skein of hand-dyed merino yarn that I purchased about a year ago from The Sitting Tree on etsy in the colorway seaspray:

I am so drawn to teal right now, so I immediately thought of this stashed yarn.

Cowl Me Maybe

I must admit that I really don't like that song...but it fit, so I gratuitously used it anyhow. And now it will be in my head for the rest of the day.

As summer seems to finally be losing its death grip on fall, I've picked up the needles again. I have had the candle flame cowl (which I've dubbed ramona, because if I can't have xx babies, I'll have xx cowls) resting on some big ole size 11 needles for about a year. It was over halfway completed, and the stitch pattern is really pretty, so I'd decided awhile ago that it would not succumb to the frog pile. Making an effort to reduce my unfinished business, I spent a couple of evenings knitting it to completion and I'm really glad I did, because this was my reward:

With that completed, I got to pick a new project from my ravelry queue. A new Pepperberry Knits infinity scarf/cowl pattern had me at hello, so I cast on with some bulky wool/acrylic blend that I had on hand. In a cool seaglass blue, it knit up really quickly and with great stitch definition. I knew that I'd want a rainbow of these cowls.

A friend of mine felt the same way because she asked me to make her one in a burnt orange for autumn. I ordered some really pretty baby alpaca from etsy artist Knitcessity and it was in my hands in a matter of days. I cast on last night, and knit the first few rows; the yarn feels lovely in my hands and I can't wait to see the difference in drape on this one. Here's a peek at the delish yarn, just begging to be a squishy cowl...

Dying to make Ramona your own? You can purchase her in my etsy shop, and she'll be on her way to you in a jiff! I hope to get a license to sell the Poppy cowl soon, so stay tuned!

Pesto Chango

Baby Number three has joined our world, which means I have been adjusting to a new speed. My mom came to stay with me for two weeks, and ended up staying for almost a month-I must have seemed pretty pathetic. With an unexpected c-section, school starting and a kiddo in soccer for the first time, the help was more than welcome.

I was oh-so-happy I had prepared all of those freezer meals and had completed a lot of the projects on my list so that I wasn't just sitting on my bed, nursing for the bazillionth time (who knew 10 pound babies would be so hungry?!), thinking of the gallery wall I still wanted to complete. Yes, I would have been obsessing.

My mom had been talking about pesto and my basil plants were pretty much out of control, so the first time Baby Tres took a nap without being splayed across my chest (in his carseat, of course), I ran out to the garden, plucked about 3 cups of basil leaves and dashed back inside to put the rest of the ingredients in the food processor.

Toasting the pine nuts, I took a deep breath and slooooowed down-it smelled so good, and I relished being in front of a gas burner again, since that's frowned upon while holding a newborn. After a few quick pulses and then a spin in the processor with olive oil drizzling in, the parmesan, basil, pinenuts, garlic, salt and pepper all came together in a fragrant green bowl of happiness. I used my small cookie scoop to divide into an ice cube tray that I'd paid more than I should for, because it's technically a 'baby food storage container' and reserved the rest for the next night's dinner; roasted tomato and pesto pasta from Our Best Bites (cookbook number 1).

I knew I was starting to feel human again because it was Family Movie Night rolled and making the pesto inspired me to make home-made pizza instead of ordering it in. We have a great local butcher, Blue Valley Meats, (just featured in Sunset Magazine), so I picked up some italian sausage since the kids' favorite is 'meat lovers' and my mom and I would enjoy an amped-up adult version. Starting with a basic dough recipe, I pre-baked the crust for about 10 minutes so that it wouldn't get soggy. Then I added a touch of marinara and started layering on the sausage crumbles, fresh slices of lemon boy and solar fire tomatoes (from my garden, natch), basil, healthy slices of Mozzarella di Bufala, and dollops of the pesto I'd made earlier. It was ah-mazing!

The most recent of my kitchen adventures has been (again, Our Best Bites...I'm a little obsessed, I guess!) Caramelized Banana Bread with a Browned Butter Glaze. Holy deliciousness-I would write more, but the babe calls, which means the boobs must follow, just make the bread yourself, because it's delish!