Kale-splosion

Remember the other day when I posted about how my day was royally sucking? I went home and experimented with kale and potatoes. Because what else is a girl to do when she has loads of reading still to do for class and papers to complete? That's right--avoidance is key.

Not finding the mixture to my liking, I threw it into a metal pie plate and into the fridge. I just didn't want to deal with it and didn't want to throw it away either (there are people starving in Detroit, for gosh sake). It wasn't the right consistency for what I wanted to do, so I decided to give it a day.

This evening, I came home and was confronted by the menacing kale-potato pie taking up space in our crammed fridge. Instead of throwing it away, I made it into two different dishes.

Basically, it's just two microwaved (baked) potatoes, mashed up and some sauteéd kale with lemon juice added in. Throw it into a food processor with your seasonings of choice and some water. Here's where it got tricky, though, and KEEP IN MIND that I'm still playing around with the recipe logistics: I wanted to make Kale Fries. NOT Kale Chips...Kale FRIES.

And I wanted them baked. I thought adding a bit of potato starch to them would make them firm up enough, but I just kind of gave up and make a stir-fry instead (yeah, whatever, sometimes you have to throw in the towel!).

So today, after thinking long and hard on it (for reals, my brain hurt!), I came up with two different dishes to try out.

First up was a Potato and Kale Bake, which was just throwing half of the mixture into two ramekins, topping them with cheddar-style Daiya, and baking at 350 deg. F for about 20-25 minutes (I lost count, sorry, I'm not good with math).

The other, which I am still toying around with, involved taking the slightly-solidified and cold (important) kale-potato mixture, carefully rolling them into balls, and coating them with a mixture of nooch, wheatgerm, and wheat flour and baking along with the ramekins. They flattened out a little while baking, but they tasted really good. The outside got pretty hard, but the insides stayed soft, which was nice.

And on the side was a massaged kale salad, which I saw on TV months ago and have been wanting to try out (agave subbed for honey). Super-frickin' YUM.

I think next time I might add some flour to the potato-kale mixture, then coat the balls in the same mixture. The Hubs decided to wax sarcastic and suggest that I should have made a kale smoothie to round out my meal. Don't tempt me, dude.

Anyway, kitchen stuff is fun, yeah!!!!

Jes