I grow kale everywhere. Outside in the garden. Outside in the front garden. In the greenhouse (read: ugly hoop house in the front of our yard.) Inside to get a jump on kale starts when the greenhouse is full. It's pretty much an insatiable love for kale chips.
Er.
Kale.
In any case, I grow as much as I can and consume even more. This weekend I harvested three plants from the greenhouse that got us through the winter and gave us an early start to spring. I forgot to vent the greenhouse before a bout of really hot weather so most of the plants were starting to bolt. Besides, technically we built the greenhouse to grow things other than kale chip ingredients. I reluctantly dug them out and saved every precious leaf. Now we have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, collards, chard, zucchini and well, a little more kale in there.
5 pounds of kale might not sound like much, but I assure you it is, even to an enthusiast like myself. You'll know once you start processing it for storage.
My arms are seriously sore from using the salad spinner so much!
Sometimes I feel like I have time to grow our food, process our food, or
cook our food, or eat our food, but not all of them all at once.
I doubt that we'll ever feel we have enough time to do it all leisurely. Mother Nature never allows for that, let alone balancing work and family and our modern society. But it's easy to forget your labor once you get to take those first few bites--whether it is the middle of winter and your pulling out your preserves or kale chips straight from the dehydrator. It also helps when someone else likes the end-results as much as you do.
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| 5# of kale. Phase 1: Harvest the kale from the plants. Go for the outermost leaves and use scissors for easy leaf cutting. |
In any case, I grow as much as I can and consume even more. This weekend I harvested three plants from the greenhouse that got us through the winter and gave us an early start to spring. I forgot to vent the greenhouse before a bout of really hot weather so most of the plants were starting to bolt. Besides, technically we built the greenhouse to grow things other than kale chip ingredients. I reluctantly dug them out and saved every precious leaf. Now we have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, collards, chard, zucchini and well, a little more kale in there.
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| 5# of kale. Phase 2: Soak in cold water, gently lift out (no swishing!) and dip into "clean" water before putting through the salad spinner |
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| 5# of kale. Phase 3: Poke several holes in large ziploc baggies with a dry paper towel. Gently fill and put in fridge. Immediately make 3 kale dishes so you don't have to fit any more gallon ziplocs in your fridge. |
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| 5# kale. Phase 4: Eat every last bit of it! Baby Bee scraping the last few bites of "cheezy" kale chips from the dehydrator tray |
I doubt that we'll ever feel we have enough time to do it all leisurely. Mother Nature never allows for that, let alone balancing work and family and our modern society. But it's easy to forget your labor once you get to take those first few bites--whether it is the middle of winter and your pulling out your preserves or kale chips straight from the dehydrator. It also helps when someone else likes the end-results as much as you do.
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