Kale Chips, Blueberry Muffins, Waffled Eggplant

It has been a while since I last made a post. I'm sure this will be a regular occurrence on this blog - but don't worry, I'll keep eating so I'll keep coming back here to write about it eventually.

Back in July, Ben and I took a trip down to Lake Ouachita in Arkansas, and we did some camping on the way. Of course, we needed to prepare some snacks to keep us going on our trip. This post is about those snacks.

Inspired by my friend Melissa's kale chips story, we decided to make some of our own. We purchased two varieties of kale from Green Grocer (I don't know what they were exactly), cut the leaves into manageable sizes, lightly salted and oiled them, and baked them as per the instructions. Well, Melissa did note that the timing is crucial, and I'm afraid to say that we burned about half of them.

This is what they looked like before they went in the oven. For some reason I don't have any 'after' pictures. This is probably because I got very frustrated with the process; I kept burning them and the kitchen was getting very hot. Of the ones that didn't burn, I found their taste very bitter. Fortunately, Ben liked them very much (he has better taste and sense than I do) and he finished off the kale chips at our campground the next evening.




We also had a lovely box of blueberries (Seedling Farms) in our produce subscription that week. My mom often made blueberry muffins for long car trips when I was a little kid, and I wanted to replicate that. I looked for a simple recipe that only called for basic ingredients that I had on hand. This recipe for "Very Simple Blueberry Muffins" seemed to fit the bill. The only change I made was adding a little bit of lemon zest to the batter last minute.

The muffins came out with just the right soft texture and light fluffiness. They stayed moist and delicious through the next day - and they might have kept even longer if we hadn't gobbled them all up! I've used this recipe again since then, and will continue to use it in the future, any time blueberries come along.






When we stopped by Green Grocer earlier that day to pick up the kale, they were giving away Japanese eggplant. Apparently the oddly shaped skinny eggplant wasn't appealing to casual shoppers - they gave it away for free to make room for more salable produce. We figured... why not? The price was right!

While I was fiddling around with the muffins, Ben experimented with the eggplant. He cut it into little medallions and put it on our waffle iron. When it started to smell good, he removed them and tossed them in a bowl with some olive oil, soy sauce, and salt. This made a delicious snack to keep us going through our kale chip and muffin marathon.

By the way, a waffle iron is a versatile kitchen tool and I recommend it to everyone. I could expound on its virtues forever. But that is for another post.



There is a lot more catching up to do. I have more pictures and everything. Stay tuned this week and I will update about camping food, pesto, potato cakes, peach cobbler, and more!