Kale!

Let's talk about kale.

One of the things I love most about the Northwest is that I can find fresh organic leafy greens, year-round. Kale, especially, is readily available in your local market from mid-winter through early spring. This time of year kale is especially sweet and tender. I came fairly late to kale, as a cook. It wasn't one of the greens I remember my mom cooking, when I was growing up in Montana.

Kale and collard greens are old plants, cultivated in kitchen-gardens for nearly as long as we have records. Described by 1st century writers, the Romans and Greeks grew greens very similar to modern kale and collard. Either the Romans or the Celts introduced "coles" to Britain.

Kale is a good bit tougher than spinach or swiss chard, so it's not a great choice to eat raw in salads. It's well worth eating for any hungry blogger, though, because it's economical and has relatively few calories. It's loaded with vitamins A, C, B1, B2, B6, and K, and minerals like manganese, potassium, iron, and calcium. Kale has no cholesterol and provides significant amounts of both dietary fiber and protein.

So if you're not going to put it in salads, how's a hungry blogger supposed to eat the stuff? It's easy. Also, knowing how to cook kale will make you seem like a cooking God to your hungry friends who are subsisting on the plain old ramen noodles we've already talked about here.

First, buy the crispest, greenest, sweetest-smelling kale in the produce section. Take it home, wash it in cold water, and shake the excess water from the leaves. Each leaf can be folded lengthwise, and the toughest portion of the central stem trimmed out with a sharp knife.

The simplest way to cook kale is to toss it in a pot with about an inch of boiling water, cover with a lid, bring the water back to a boil, then drain your kale and serve with a little butter. Better yet, toss the leaves in seasoned vinegar.

You can steam kale. You can boil it, bake it, braise it, stir-fry it, or shred it into soup, pasta, or mashed potatoes. You can serve it plain, tossed with butter and sea salt, with hot sauce, with vinegar, with peppers, with crisp-fried bacon crumbles, with sausage, with cranberries, with roasted garlic, with . . . well, you get the idea.

Try some different dishes. You can lightly steam your kale leaves, then chill them; serve tossed with a light vinaigrette, topped with toasted hazelnuts and dried cranberries. If that doesn't work for you, try shredding or chopping your kale then tossing it into a skillet with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, a handful of chopped shallots, and sauté the mixture over medium heat until the kale is tender. Make mashed potatoes however you like to make them, but then stir your sauteed kale mixture into the potatoes before serving—or if you have picky eaters, serve the potatoes on a bed of sautéed kale. Add bacon, if you like it. I sort of think nearly everything is better served with crisp-fried bacon crumbles.

The point is, keep trying kale until you find a way that suits you, and whoever you're cooking for. It's nutritious, tasty, economical, and you never have to feel guilty about avoiding leafy-greens again.