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!

Kale's Not Lettuce

My friend Melissa is definitely a foodie, with years of experience in the restaurant business and a passion for good food. Among her many food adventures, she also has a food blog called That's Not Lettuce. This would have been great for me to remember a couple days ago when we brought home our kale, because that leafy delight was her topic that day! In her post she discussed kale's relationship to various members of the animal kingdom, and how to make it into a yummy snack.

Here is how she made Kale Chips:

All you do is toss the kale with a little olive oil and sea salt, lay it on a cookie sheet and bake it in an oven preheated to 350° for about 10 minutes. Don’t crowd it. It will steam instead of bake if you do. Be careful, it will burn, but you also don’t want to pull it out too early, or it will be too chewy. I had a blast trying different spices and salts on it. My favorite was a little bit of smoked paprika.

Ben and I used up the kale we got from Green Grocer, but Melissa's post has inspired me to perhaps purchase some more and try making some of these kale chips to take with us on our upcoming road trip.

Sauteed Kale and Leeks over Rice

Ben and I came home last night, our first lot of subscription produce in hand, wondering what to do for dinner. We were both ravenous, so the idea of investing time and effort into our food before getting to the eating part wasn't a fun one. I start Googling. I discovered Colcannon, a traditional Irish dish that incorporates kale and leeks with potatoes (which we still have in abundance). It looked interesting, but it wasn't quick and easy enough for our voracious hunger.

I begin to think. I figure, kale is kind of like chard, right? A couple months ago, Ben brought home some chard which was delicious when sauteed. And leeks are just like giant green onions; that seems like something you could sauté too. I thought this just might be the kind of easy we were looking for. Searching for guidance I found this recipe. 

Here's how I did it:

• Following the linked recipe, I omitted the onions and garlic and substituted the sliced white and light green parts of 3 leeks. This was sauteed with the chopped bunch of kale (about 4 big leaves) in olive oil over medium heat for just over a minute.
• For the steaming part, I opted to use 1/2 a cup of water rather than veggie broth; and only had it covered for barely 4 minutes.
• Then we drained the kale and put it in a bowl, tossed it with 1 capful of lemon juice (maybe 1/2 a teaspoon?) and lightly seasoned it with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Ben had the foresight to put some rice in the cooker while we were messing about with all that. The kale, cooked down and served out over rice, made just two servings. Perfect. Ben gave his a few drops of Sriracha, which worked well, but I think the flavor of everything stands up great on its own too.

Simple, quick, yummy, and healthy. I count this as our first produce subscription success.

First Veggie Box

Yesterday Ben and I walked over and picked up our very first veggie box from Chicago's Green Grocer at Grand & Noble. I love that place! They are pretty expensive, but have a great selection of local and vegan items, not to mention right in our neighborhood. And I don't think you can beat their veggie subscription price of $15/week.

This is what we got; all are organic except for the blueberries, which are IPM (integrated pest management).

• Red kale (City Farm)
• Leeks (City Farm)
• Parsley (City Farm)
• Cucumbers (Genesis Growers)
• Double Blueberries (Seedling)

I'm planning on using the cucumbers and parsley with tabbouleh and hummus. I'll be using the blueberries for vegan muffins to take on our road trip this weekend (provided Ben doesn't eat them all first!). The leeks and the kale seemed like more of a mystery to me, but we figured it all out. More on that in the next post!

Beer Braised Potatoes

Recently a neighbor gave us some of their extra food: a whole lot of canned veggies, and 10lbs of potatoes. That seemed like a lot of potatoes for the two of us. So I figured we'd better get started going through them. I started flipping through the potato section of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything". Most of the yummy soups were dairy based and I wasn't in the mood to experiment with a substitute. I think we were all out of soy-milk anyway. In fact, we were out of most things. The only other veggie sitting around was a lone yellow onion.

The recipe for 'Braised Potatoes' seemed simple enough though, and only called for things I had in the kitchen. I didn't know what braised meant before I read the recipe. But, assuming I did it right, this 'braising' thing was pretty delicious. It came out like a kind of thick potato stew.

This is how I did it:

Ingredients: Olive Oil, Potatoes, Onion, Veggie Broth, Beer, Salt, Pepper.

• Scrub and peel your potatoes (I used 6 small-medium all purpose potatoes), and chop them into small-medium chunks. Dice your onion (I used 1 medium onion)
• Heat 3 Tablespoons olive oil over medium heat.Add the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and cook until golden, stirring regularly. (This took a lot longer than I expected, around 10 minutes)
• Add the onion, stir and cook til soft (I think this took me 2 minutes?)
• Add 1 can of veggie broth, and then add beer until the potatoes are covered in liquid. (I ended up using half a bottle of Rogue Dead Guy, Ben drank the other half)
•  Simmer for 20-25 minuted uncovered (I let it go for 30 minutes, it didn't look quite right until then)

We served it hot, garnished it with Bacon Bits (they're vegan, surprise!), and ate it while watching Murder on the Orient Express.