Back Pocket Kale Salad

A big thanks to Hook Line and Savor for sponsoring this post and for creating great-tasting, allergy-friendly, clean ingredient products.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.

In my opinion, every person should have a kale salad recipe in their back pocket.  This is important.  File it under Mary’s life rules to live by.  Whether you’re the only vegetarian in your family or the only person in your circle who cares about hitting your daily green quota, kale is there for you my friend.  In the past year, I think I’ve brought a kale salad to every family dinner I’ve been invited to.  Sometimes I’m the only one who eats it, but I’m not complaining.  In fact, if I were a vegetable, I think it’s safe to say I’d be a kale salad.  And if you think that sounds boring as far as anthropomorphized vegetables are concerned, then you don’t even know kale salad.  It’s healthy, hearty, and surprising every time.  Just as I hope to be.  Don’t sleep on kale salad, y’all.

I’ve documented many times here on the blog that I prefer weeknight dinners that are fast and balanced. Ain’t nobody got time to make an apple and pear mostarda on a Tuesday night… I save that sort of cookery for the weekends.  Instead, I opt for fast proteins and even faster vegetables, like this delightful meal of kale salad and beer battered haddock from Hook Line and Savor.  Side note:  this beer battered haddock is dairy, egg, and gluten free, and is cooked from frozen in about 25 minutes.  Plenty of time to make yourself a nice kale salad.

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Easy as Potato Pie {vegetarian & gluten free recipe}

I wrote this Potato Pie post as part of a series for Tasteful Selections Potatoes, which is sponsoring Katie’s Krops, an awesome hunger-focused nonprofit fueled by kid-run gardens, through January 2016 (details below). 

There’s something simultaneously romantic and nostalgic about gathering for a meal while you’re still in your PJ’s.  And with all the eggs, potatoes, cheese, and bread, breakfast is the clearcut best meal of the day.  The problem with breakfast, though, is that most of us are too tired or too hungry to throw together a hearty meal first thing in the morning.  Oftentimes, I circumvent this issue by having a pre-breakfast snack.  Which, since I’m already starving, ends up being the equivalent of a normal-sized breakfast, and ultimately results in me eating two meals worth of food.  And then I have to go for a run when I really just want to curl up on the couch and drink my coffee dangit.

Kale & Onion Potato Pie

Easy breakfasts are key.  I call this easy recipe “Potato Pie” because it has lots of potatoes and it’s shaped like… a pie.  The concept here is simple:  thinly sliced potatoes, eggs, and whatever vegetables or leftovers you have on hand.  Use of a food processor makes quick work of the potato slicing, and using thin-skinned baby potatoes means no peeling is required.  I prepared this version of potato pie with kale, but there are lots of options.  Broccoli, squash, or mushrooms?  Perfect.  Cheese is always welcome.  To keep things light, I used a mix of whole eggs and egg whites, but if you aren’t on the egg white train, just use a dozen eggs.

The key to making a good potato pie is making sure the fillings taste great on their own.  Season them until they’re good enough to eat solo. Then be sure to season the eggs before you combine them with the potato mixture.

potato pie {gluten free vegetarian breakfast recipe via FerventFoodie.com}

Few things beat sharing breakfast with your loved ones, buy you can add a little more love to your meal by purchasing Tasteful Selections potatoes.  Through January 2016, Tasteful Selections is sponsoring Katie’s Krops, a non-profit organization that donates crops from youth-run gardens to help feed people in need by donating a portion of the profits from specially marked bags of Tasteful Selections’ Ruby Sensation and Honey Gold Potatoes.  So pick up a sack of their potatoes and give this Kale and Onion Potato Pie recipe a try!  If you’re interested in learning more about Katie’s Krops, check out this video.

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Kale Caesar Salad with Pan-Seared Shrimp

Back in 2010, I made a personal vow to focus on healthy eating (read all about it here). This was a challenge for me, the girl who considers bread, brie, and wine a square meal, so I started with small things, like packing a homemade lunch each day, instead of relying on Lean Cuisines and fast food. Slowly, I established a routine of making healthy choices whenever I was the one in control of the preparation (well, MOST of the time, anyway), which lets me enjoy eating at restaurants without worrying quite so much about all the salt and the butter and delightful carbohydrates I’m consuming.

One of my healthy eating goals for 2014 is to incorporate more kale into my diet, as part of the Kale Up campaign.  Kale is a green I’ve shied away from in the past, other than occasionally tossing a few handfuls into a nice bean soup. Kale is a very hearty green — you don’t have to worry about it going limp or getting soggy. I often find kale salads are even better when the kale has a bit of time to “marinate” in the dressing.

kale Caesar salad with shrimp

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120 Calorie Cheddar-Kale Scones {recipe}

So, kale.  It gets lots of buzz in the health food world, and it should.  It’s loaded with calcium, vitamins A, C, and K, anti-cancer carotenoids and flavonoids, and it’s been shown to help lower cholesterol.  But, uh, it’s kale, and people aren’t always sure what the heck to do with it.  The good news is the options are vast:  make a salad with a warm vinaigrette, add a bagful to soup or stew, wilt it down with garlic and serve it as a side , throw it in your frittata or fruit smoothie (seriously!), add it to pasta, or make a kale and caramelized onion grilled cheese, if you please.  

A few weeks back, I got an email asking me to make my 2014 the year to KALE UP.  I’m down for healthy food challenges, so I checked out the KALE UP site, to see what this campaign was all about.  Their first blog post introduces kale as your “new friend with benefits” and explains the year to “kale up” means finding easy ways to get kale in your daily life.

I suggest we all start with these 120 calorie savory cheddar-kale scones–they’re a tasty way to score some kale points for the day.

Cheddar-Kale Scones 4

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Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup

This time of year, my absolute favorite thing to make for my work-week lunches is soup.  I’m sure you all can relate to the need to feed your belly warm comforting foods once winter weather rolls in.  Unfortunately, the last few soups I’ve tried haven’t been very exciting.  I made a chicken taco soup and came to the realization that corn just needs to stay on the cob and keep the heck out of my soup bowl.  I also made chicken pot pie soup.  I love chicken pot pie… but the best part of the pot pie is the flaky crust and by turning the pot pie into a pot pieless soup I had effectively cooked up a big batch of blah.

So, I’ve been searching high and low for a new soup to try and finally came across a promising recipe for White Bean Soup with Kale and Chorizo in the November 2010 issue of Cooking Light.  It sounded pretty darn delicious to me, and even though I’d never tried Kale I figured I’d give it a shot.

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I’ve never had chorizo either (though I’m sure I’d love it), and I happened to have some leftover Honeysuckle Hot Italian Turkey sausage I wanted to use up…  So the starting point for my soup was two of these links:

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I used a knife to remove the casings on the sausage, then tossed them into a soup pot that I’d heated up over a medium high flame and sprayed down with some cooking spray. 

I let the sausage do it’s thang for a bit, stirring occasionally.  No need to worry about the hard brown bits on the bottom of the pan – these will turn into little nuggets of flavor in just a bit:

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Once the sausage was no longer pink, I added four large cloves of minced garlic along with my beloved onion:

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I seasoned this mixture up with some S&P.

I would have been more than happy (elated, actually) to have eaten this simple combo for dinner… 

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I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grab a spoon and savor a few bites of the sausage onion goodness straight out of the pot.  Heaven!

Once the onions were nice and soft, I added about 1 cup of fat-free low sodium chicken broth to the pan and used a wooden spoon to sort of “massage” the brown bits off the bottom of the pan. 

Work it….. Wooorkkkkk ittttttt.  Winking smile 

Then I tossed in the rest of the stock in a box (approx 3 more cups), 2 cans drained and rinsed cannellini beans, and another 1/2 tsp black pepper:

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I let the soup jive on the stove for a bit, while I got to tackling the kale monster in my sink:

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I’ve never had kale before.  For those of you who haven’t had it—it’s kind of like broccoli and spinach had a baby…  A really large overgrown baby who was a little rough around the edges.  You follow? Smile

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Luckily, my years of dedicated Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals watching had trained me how to handle this kale monster. 

  • Fill the sink up with water, drop in the kale, give it a good swish and let all the gritty bits drain to the bottom. 
  • Dry the kale. 
  • THEN, hold the kale stem in one hand and slide the leaves of the kale through the fingers of your other hand (to rip the kale leaves off the tough stems). 
  • Give it a rough chop.

Once the kale was ready, I dropped about 6 cups into the soup:

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I gave it a good stir and let the hot soup wilt down the kale:

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One nice thing about kale is it doesn’t get super mooshy and limp in soup like spinach does (not that I don’t love spinach in soup – the kale just adds some welcomed texture to the pot).

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Once the kale was worked in, I popped a lid on the pot and let it simmer away for 15 minutes or so while I cleaned up the kitchen.

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And dinner was served my friends!

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I topped my soup off with 1 teaspoon of shredded parmesan cheese:

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This pot of soup made 5 good-size servings, which was plenty for me because I wanted to have some ciabatta for dunking! 

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If you wanted your bowl to overfloweth with soup – well, then I’d say the pot serves 4. 

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Regardless of how many people the pot is serving, this pot SERVES it up.  DELICIOUS, EASY, AND HEALTHY!  That’s the trifecta in my book!

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Now the only test remaining is how well this soup freezes… stayed tuned on that!

Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup Ingredients List:

  • 2 links Honeysuckle Turkey Sausage, casings removed
  • 1 medium size onion, chopped
  • 4 large cloves of garlic, minced
  • 4 cups (1 box) Swansons fat free reduced sodium chicken broth
  • 2 cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
  • 6 cups Kale, chopped
  • Black pepper!
  • 

Stats on 1/5 of the pot o’ soup:  236 Calories, 38g carbs, 4g fat, 20g protein, 10g fiber

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