I would describe myself as a semi-vegetarian. Since leaving home, I’ve drifted away from eating meat. Part of the reason is personal taste (I never liked steak, bacon, sausage, hamburger, or pork much), along with concern for the environmental degradation and animal rights issues stemming from factory farming. Yes, I do eat organic meat and sustainable seafood, but when you’re paying $7.99 per pound for free-range, grass-fed hamburger, beef is not what’s for dinner very often.
My husband Mike (whose parents became vegetarians during his teenage years), is willing to go along with what he calls my “hippy” tendencies. He was actually the one who introduced me to tofu stir-fry, he enjoys chickpea-spinach curry as much as I do, and is tolerant of the plethora of meatless pasta recipes we make for dinner on weeknights. But easy-going as Mike is, he has a line in the sand: kale.
Mike’s horror stories about kale scared me away from trying it. Last year, we ruled out several CSAs solely because kale was one of their main offerings. When our CSA announced at the beginning of this season that they would start including kale in our share, Mike shook his head dismally. “I’m not eating it,” he grumbled. “And you’re not going to like it either.”
The first bunch of kale that we received actually looked rather appealing to me, despite all of Mike’s negativity. And included with the kale was a recipe for kale chips that would convince Mike that I had either lost my mind or definitively joined the hippy-vegetarian-kale-loving cabal.
Here is my variation on the original kale chip recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 bunch of kale (about 4 cups)
- Canola oil cooking spray
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wash kale and remove stems. Cut or tear leaves into bite-size pieces.
Line baking sheet with wax paper. Place kale on baking sheet in a single layer.
Generously spray kale pieces with canola oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the edges of the kale chips are lightly browned and crispy.
Enjoy! (unless you're Mike, in which case you will instead look at the kale chips with suspicion and disgust)
