Kale Chips

I received a bunch of kale in my Planet Organic order this week and decided to give kale chips another chance. I overcooked a batch that I made a few weeks back and they ended up brown and bitter. And I'll tell you, when kale chips go wrong, they go to a very dark place. Everything about the experience is just putrid. There's no peeling off the crispy edges and salvaging a bite.

I've never had much of a sweet tooth. My weaknesses are all crispy, crunchy and covered in salt. When we ate dairy and wheat I loved Cheese-Its (especially the giant kind). As a matter of fact, outside of them being horrible for you, I'd probably prefer to eat a Cheese-It more than anything else (embarrassingly). But, things like Cheese-It's and pretzels are snacks of the past and kale chips are my food of the now.

I have to admit, they were very easy to make and when not overcooked they were delicious. I was really enjoying the snack until my children discovered them and confiscated the plate. I found them to be quite filling too.

Here's how I did it.

I preheated the oven to 375 and lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

I cleaned and removed the stems from a large bunch of organic kale. After rinsing again I dried the kale in a towel.

I ripped the kale into pieces and spread it on my baking sheet and drizzled olive oil over top. I then sprinkled on a bit of garlic salt and just a few cracked fennel seeds. We're not huge fennel eaters in our house, so I wanted there to be a little burst of flavor every so often, but not in every bite.

Then, I baked them for 10 minutes and they were done. Delicious!

My Favorite Day of The Week!

It's Thursday! I love Thursday.

Generally, Thursday morning doesn't have ANYTHING on say, the occasional Saturday morning adventure or on a lazy Sunday morning full of a whole bunch of nothing but a blessed bloody mary and marathon of Mad Men.

Thursday begins like every other day. My husband flicks on the lights and forcefully drags me out of bed We get up at 6 and everyone complains that they are too tired to live and at least one person hates what I made them for breakfast. Someone will cry when brushing her hair (sometimes this is me) and everyone will gripe when it's time to get dressed (including me).

But on Thursday morning, something MAGICAL happen when I am dropping Jay at the train station and the kids off at school. Someone comes to my house and drops off a large green carton full of really healthy, wonderful, often locally made/grown food. Every Thursday I come home and am greeted at the door with what I have come to feel is treasure. Sure, sometimes during the week I go into my order and tweak it, depending on whether or not I still have purple onions left from last week. But sometimes I don't look at the order at all. So, when I open the green box everything inside is a big surprise!

The company who does this is called Planet Organics. I know that there are a lot of co-op's out there and a lot of produce delivery services available, but Planet Organics rocks my world. I mean, I find the entire thing completely exciting. After all, nothing is more depressing to me than a trip to Whole Foods, where I go to grieve for the fact that I am not a millionaire and inevitably walk out of feeling a.)hungry, b.) robbed and c.) like I will return to a house full of genetically-modified-high-fructose-MSG-Nitrate-infused -apples that have been injected with Red #5 and casein just because my daughter is allergic to it. Planet Organics is pretty much Whole Foods, but small, independent, friendlier and online. So, I signed up for a delivery each week. And in case you missed it, it comes on Thursday. I pay a certain amount of money and they fill my basket with stuff and deliver it. We have two lemon trees, a peach tree and an orange tree, so I clearly don't want any of those. I was able to go in and just check a box that said to never deliver them to me. I also was able to check off preferences, like I always want cilantro.

It really doesn't get better than this. You know, you can even give them a key and they'll let themselves in and unload your groceries for you. No joke. I think that's a little creepy, so I don't do it. But I could do it. And I like options.