Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Dayton Diva's Kale Salad

This recipe came from the self-proclaimed Dayton Diva, Evonne Foshee - one of the members of the Amity-Dayton Cohort/Ford Family Foundation Leadership Institute. We had a potluck meeting, she brought the salad,  everyone enjoyed it so much, we got the recipe.

Her recipe goes like this:

1 chopped up bag of kale chopped more
1 apple diced
1 handful of dried cherries chopped or a handful of cranberries chopped or some of both
1 hand full of chopped candied walnuts or pecans or as I often use some salted sunflower seeds.

optional...
add some chopped broccoli slaw and chop it up finer or finely chopped cabbage slaw.
raspberry poppy seed dressing or make your own with a little balsamic some creamy dressing of some kind and some poppy seeds and some sugar or sweetener.
As you can see you can be creative here an add and subtract as you wish give me any ideas that you had at all incorporated them into my recipe I'm always looking for something new and exciting.


Here is my interpretation, for a potluck to serve 12:
  • Kale. I didn't have a bag. I had two huge bunches of organic kale. I chopped up 1/2 a bunch or about 6-8 big leaves of curly green kale and it turned into about 6 cups of finely chopped kale. I "chopped" using my kitchen shears. Seeing the mound of kale, I stopped chopping.
  • 2 Apples and 2-3 tsp of Lemon Juice.  After getting the ingredients in the bowl and mixed up, it seemed to want another apple, thus I used 2. After chopping/dicing apple with my Pampered Chef Chopper and putting on top of kale, I sprinkled with the lemon juice to keep it from turning brown.
  • Almonds, roasted, unsalted, no sweetener. Chopped up fine with the PChef Chopper. 2/3 C.
  • Broccoli Slaw. Bought a package at grocery, and used about 1/2 of it. volume wise it seemed like 1.5 cups. I chopped it up finer, with PChef Chopper.
  • Dressing.  A couple Tbsp of Light Mayo tossed on the salad. A couple Tbsp of greek non-fat yogurt (plain), tossed in salad. And 1/2 cup or so of Dannon Light'n'Fit Vanilla yogurt.  My intention was to moisten the ingredients, and not slather them up with dressing. Mix it all in.
Make the salad in a huge bowl, and keep stirring or tossing with a huge meat fork, salad tongs, whatever. Once it's all combined and mixed up, load up the serving bowl.

Enjoy!  The picture, from Christmas Dinner, shows it was a hit.

Rated a  4.85 on the Kale Scale.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Kale Ham with Gorgonzola and Persimmons

Deeeelicious!!

Saute
1/2 cup Onion, chopped
2 brussel sprouts, chopped
1.5 tsp olive oil

Add and keep saute
2 persimmons (Japanese), cored, cut up, with peel intact
2.5 oz ham cutlet (precooked kind), diced


Add, lower heat, simmer, wilt the kale and reduce liquid
1+ cup Kale, ripped to bite size pieces
1 tsp Baharat (a middle eastern spice mix)
1/4 cup pomegranate juice (100% juice)

Add and scramble
1 beaten egg
1/2 tsp ground pepper

At the end, add and mix, melt the cheese
1 Tbsp gorgonzola cheese

Mix it all up and serve. Enjoy!


Rated a 4.74 on the Kale Scale.