Kale, Friends and Keep It Simple

This morning when one of my friends read on my blog that I was out of kale, she sent me a message letting me know that her garden was overflowing, and asking would I please come pick some kale so it wouldn't  go to waste.

Kale is my favorite vegetable. Last time I kept a blog--a journal of what I bought and how much waste I generated--kale became a running joke because I mentioned it nearly every day. I like kale in salads, smoothies and soups. I like kale chips and kale sauteed with garlic and olive oil.  I have two house rabbits who love kale, too.

So as you can imagine, I raced over to her house. She lives on the other side of town, and I hadn't seen her garden yet this summer. She and her husband have turned their entire urban back yard into a series of raised beds connected by flowing paths. I'm kicking myself for not having brought my camera, because it's both enchanting and impressive. Kale, chard, beans, squash, tomatoes, carrots, herbs, potatoes and more mingle with sunflowers and other bird-attracting plants.

My friend told me to take as much as I could eat from the plants that were threatening to bolt. I clipped their centers and left their outer leaves. This gave me about a gallon of kale, plus she told me to take some Swiss chard, too. Then--my friends are so generous--she and her husband gave me some of the kim chee which had been given to them by another friend who makes it in five-gallon crocks.

As if all this weren't enough, her husband even filled two big buckets of compost for me.

I had brought a little soap to barter for the kale, but it turned out that my soap was a mere trinket compared to everything they gave me.  "Barter's the way of the..." She stopped herself from saying the future. "Barter's the way of right now."

Her husband said, "Pay it forward is even better."

So for lunch today I happily ate a kale, kalamata olive and sesame seed salad with a sun dried tomato vinagrette. To make the vinagrette,  I soaked the tomatoes in water for about an hour (I'd started soaking them before I left to pick kale.)Then I put them in the food processor with equal parts cashews and olive oil, a clove of garlic, some apple cider vinegar, a little salt, and buzzed them until smooth. I used the cashews because I was getting low on olive oil. I could have used a different nut or some avocado, or of course made it with all olive oil. You can be flexible substituting one source of fat for another when making salad dressings. You can also substitute different acids: vinegar, citrus juice, even tomato. Just make sure you have a fat, an acid, and some salt when you're improvising; and feel free to add herbs or sweeteners.

Later I had a watermelon/mint smoothie. Delicious! But then I wondered how it would taste with some lime and honey. The answer: not as good.  This was a lesson in Keep It Simple, Stupid.

After dinner, I had more of my neighbor's blueberries, topped with this recipe for lemon cashew cream. The lemon cashew cream was tasty--I can think of a lot of potential uses for it--and I wanted a substantial dessert because I'd been hungry all day. But honestly, it wasn't as good as just eating a handful of blueberries. Another lesson in the KISS principle.

I'm going to end with a little story about my sister. She e-mailed me to say she'd tried to make the carrot/date/nut cookies I'd mentioned a few posts earlier, but had failed miserably. "Oh no," I wrote back. "What happened?" She said she'd bought the dates. And then she ate them.

Today's Chow:
smoothie with cherries, blueberries, chard and lamb's quarters. No fats, which is probably why I was ravenous most of the day.
kale and olive salad with sun dried tomato vinagrette.
leftover pesto and zucchini rolled in a leaf of Swiss chard. Green salad.
blueberries and lemon cashew cream.