Thursday, March 25, 2010

Hail to Kale


My sons' school is fortunate to have received an Edible Schoolyard grant and they spend some time each week in a beautiful garden, planting, harvesting and cooking vegetables and herbs. This week my youngest, Oliver, came home ecstatic about eating

KALE CHIPS.

You heard me right. Kale chips. Evidently, they had picked some of the leafy kale from the garden, separated the curly bits from the stems and baked it in a hot oven. They then drizzled a little olive oil and sea salt on it and ate it.

My son Oliver despises most vegetables and would never, ever eat kale if I had prepared it. Despite The Husband being a talented, amazing chef, and yours truly a former chef and damn good cook, this boy is very, very picky.

Except for KALE CHIPS.

I literally ran to the grocery store today and purchased some red leaf kale. When he came home from school, eager to make kale chips for me, I let him.

He separated the leaves from the stems and instructed me to put the stems in the compost.
He objected when I attempted to drizzle too much olive oil on the leaves in the bowl and insisted that it came afterward. The same with the salt. We put it on a half-sheet tray and popped it into a hot oven.

In about five minutes, we took the tray out. Each rather large leaf was shrunken to a crispy curled up bit of green crunch.



We sprinkled lots of sea salt on and put them in a bowl. Then we ate them.


Imagine that. A bowlful of incredibly nutritious kale, eaten by an eight year old.

The end.

12 comments:

  1. I can't believe I'm actually going to try that tomorrow. Sounds great, kudos to the teacher!

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  2. I am going to try that with grandson Alex (14). He certainly loves every other variety of chip!

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  3. Seriously? He ate it? I'm going to try that one. I love kale, but the kids... bah

    So lucky that they have the Edible Schoolyard project! That kale looks beautiful

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  4. Excellent! You can make chips with almost any veggies, ya know! It's fun too!

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  5. I salute the school for teaching these children to eat healthy rather than rewarding them with fast food goodies which I read from a different post.

    Its pretty simple to make, this can be a good bonding moment for me and my child. Not to mention a healthy snack...

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  6. For someone like me that has tried to like Kale and still doesn't...this seems unbelievable that it would be good...but...hey maybe I would like it!

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  7. i have eaten SO MUCH kale lately. Mr. Curry makes it in olive oil on a sizzling pan until it gets browned, and I could eat a bowlful. we had chicken, brown rice and kale twice for dinner this week! :)))

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  8. Oh YUM! I'll have to try that. Abe's school is the site of the original Edible Schoolyard...and he swears everything in the garden is delicious. I love that program!!!

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  9. I love this idea! Zoe is such a chip hound that I bet I could get her to eat these.

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  10. Our CSA supplies us with lots of kale, so we make (and enjoy) kale chips, too! It's great that your 8 year old likes them. That sounds like an amazing school program. I wonder what else he'll learn to make?

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  11. oh, another chef in the family.

    and I'm putting this on the do list for the weekend. Thank you for sharing. And I would have put the olive oil on too, btw, so tell Oliver thank you for standing firm.

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  12. love love love this story.
    love that you recreated this with him instructing.
    love the edible schoolyard program. it really works!
    i wonder if they have some kind of blog where you could send this in.
    it's fantastic.
    i want to try those chips now too.
    yum.

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