Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 07:12 AM
Kale chips are all the rage these days. Healthy living bloggers everywhere are waxing on about this tasty little treat. Like my friend Robin Abrahams always says, “Add some olive oil and salt to anything, roast it in a hot oven and it will be incredibly delicious.” Or something like that! In any case, that is pretty much all it takes to make yourself some kale chips. Warning: they are addictive!!
I got my idea to make these while catching up on the G section of The Boston Globe from last week.
I love the Wednesday Food G section!
Here is the recipe.
Kale, by the way, scores an Incredible 99 on the NuVal scale.
The toughest part about this recipe is cleaning the kale. I like to shusshhhh my greens. That is my technical term for filling up my clean dish basin with cold water, letting my greens sit in the cold bath and then gently shaking them to get the dirt or sand out. I then drain the water, fill the basin up again and shussssshhh again. I had to do it three times with this dirty kale!
Next, I patted the kale dry with paper towls and stemmed it. I ended up with two piles.
The Boston Globe recipe suggests that you pour one Tablespoon of oil onto a baking sheet and spread it with a pastry brush and then lay each kale leaf onto that sheet and then turn the leaves over.
I have to admit, I blew through that one tablespoon of olive oil in a heartbeat and added some more. That was not such a great idea because some of the leaves got a little bit wilty in the end. But the leaves that had just the right amount of oil and salt were just perfect!! I loved them. My kids were not willing to try my new “chips”. They were also a little too healthy for my husband. More for me! I can see why everyone has been talking/blogging/writing about Kale Chips! Yum-meee!
Question of the Day
Have you tried Kale Chips yet? If not, do you think you would be into them?
Yesterday’s Winner
Congratulations to Commenter #28, Amy! You have won yesterday’s Trade-Up Tuesday Giveaway – two boxes of Annie’s Whole Wheat Macaroni and Cheese. Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can send it out to you. Thank you to everyone who entered!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Incredible Vegetables, kale, Kale Chips
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 07:24 AM
I love asparagus. I mean, I really love asparagus. As in it goes in my shopping cart every single week. And with a NuValscore of 100, why wouldn’t it? While I do eat this stalky green vegetable year-round, asparagus is just synonymous with Spring, don’t you think? And since Spring is right around the corner (woo hoo!!!!!), I thought that today was the perfect day to share my asparagus tips (oh, what a clever play on words!) with all of you!
Tip #1: Smell your asparagus
That’s right. Give it a whiff when selecting your asparagus at the grocery store. Does it smell fishy? If so, put it back. Asparagus spoils quickly so you want to feel the tips to make sure they are firm and make sure that it smells fresh.
Tip #2: Treat asparagus like a bunch of flowers
You know how when you come home with flowers, you need to give them a fresh cut and get them in water right away? Same holds true for asparagus. Chances are the stalks have sealed up along the bottom, so give them a fresh cut and place them in a container of water. Store them upright in your refrigerator for no more than 2-3 days.
Tip #3: Steam, then blanch.
Steaming is one way to cook asparagus. It is a great cooking method for Spring when you want to really taste the freshness of your vegetables. But there’s nothing worse then over-steamed, mushy asparagus. So, if steaming is your method of choice, steam it until the stalks just turn green and then remove them from your steamer or from your boiling water and place them in a basin of ice water. You could invest in one of those fancy-schmancy asparagus cookers, but I find that steaming it in a skillet with about a 1/2 inch of water works just fine.
Tip #4: Grill it or roast it
This is my favorite way to cook asparagus, probably because the leftovers are great on a salad the next day. On most busy weeknights, the asparagus goes right into a very hot oven (like 425 degrees). First, I submerge it in a basin of water to make sure all the sand or dirt comes off. There’s nothing worse than gritty asparagus. The, I dry it with paper towels. Next I lay it out on a cookie sheet lined with Parchment Paper. Then, I lightly coat it with olive oil using my Pampered Chef oil mister. It’s a great way to add just a small amount of oil.
Roast it until it turns bright green (about 10 minutes). Remove from oven and sprinkle with Kosher salt and lemon juice. Yum!
Instead of the oven, you can also place your lightly-oiled asparagus right on the gas grill. It does tend to come out a bit crunchier this way.
So there you have it, my Asparagus Tips! Find some non-smelly asparagus at your market today and try it out!
Question of the Day
What is your favorite Incredible Vegetable? Do you know the NuVal score? You might find it on this blog, Tina’s blog or on the Nuval website.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: asparagus, Incredible Vegetables
Monday, February 1, 2010 at 06:43 AM
What is this vegetable and how did it get into my refrigerator? Good question. Another good question would be why is it starting to look a little wilted? That would be because it’s been hanging out in my refrigerator waiting for me to do something with it – for an amount of time that I am ashamed to disclose.
Regular A Better Bag of Groceries readers have heard me talk about how I’m on this quest to cook through THAT part of the produce section. You know – the part where there are lots of beets with leafy tops, unfamiliar greens, and this specimen. This was supposed to be anise. You see, I was chatting with my friend (and spinning instructor) April, a regular reader of ABBG. She was gushing about anise and how it is this awesome vegetable that tastes like licorice and how she would like to know how else she can prepare it – other than her usual method, which is steaming. Sounded like a great blog topic to me, so I planned to buy some anise.
I headed to the grocery store for my usual weekly shopping trip with my 4-year-old in tow. For the past few weeks, we’ve been trying out the hand-held scanner for our shopping. This was only our second trip using the HHS, and I must admit, it takes some getting used to. Fortunately, I can still get my long and leggy, yet flexible, pre-schooler into the child seat of my shopping cart and she is my Scanner. She really digs the whole scanning thing and promptly tells me the numbers that come up on the scanner. It keeps her entertained and contained – truly a miracle in the grocery store. My favorite part is check-out, when I can forgo the whole putting everything on the belt and bagging procedure. Woo hoo! However, the most cumbersome part of the process is shopping in Produce, because you have to weigh your items and print bar codes. I grabbed this leafy vegetable, thinking it was anise, and upon weighing and printing my bar code, I found out that it, indeed, was not. It is Chinese Cabbage. Since I was so new to the Hand Held Scanning thing, I did not realize that you can delete items from your order – easily. I figured that out later in my shopping trip when aforementioned 4-year-old scanned the same can of crushed tomatoes 3 times.
So now, I am the proud owner of a head of Chinese Cabbage. It is an Incredible Vegetable with a NuVal score of 100. All good. But I just don’t know what to do with it. I need help. That’s where you come in…
Question of the Day
What, oh what, should I do with the Chinese Cabbage?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Chinese Cabbage, Incredible Vegetables
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 07:17 AM
See my grocery bag up there – yes there, in that Polaroid-looking photo – with all the greens sticking out of it? We arranged that little photo-shoot back in October. It was all quite low-key. My neighbor, who does some freelance children’s photography, was kind enough to come on over and shoot what would become the picture for A Better Bag of Groceries. For the shoot, I ran into my local supermarket and blindly grabbed a bunch of vegetables with green, leafy tops to stick in the grocery bag. When all was said and done, I was left with a bunch of unfamiliar vegetables with which I had little cooking experience. One of those was a bunch of collard greens.
What to do with my collard greens…
I soon found myself on Foodbuzz, hunting down recipes. I came across one titled, “Low-Fat Collards recipe.” Hmmmm. Sounded good to me. So I tried it out. And, oh my…..how I now LOVE collard greens! And they get a perfect NuVal score of 100!
This week, I decided to make collard greens again. While waiting to teach my Pilates class the other night, I was chatting with a couple of my students and I mentioned that I had been cooking collard greens. The conversation went like this:
My Student: What are collard greens?
Me: You know the part of the Produce Section where they have all sorts of vegetables that you never buy – you know, carrots with green tops on them, whole beets, escarole? Just go there. You’ll find them.
2 lbs collard greens
1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup turkey ham, diced (I just used lean deli ham that I had in my fridge)
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 Tablespoon butter
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (I used Kosher)
cracked black pepper
In a 3 quart saucepan over medium high heat, heat the olive oil just until the scent of the oil starts to bloom. (Yes, that is what the recipe says!)
Add the butter and allow to melt in the oil
Add the turkey ham and saute for about 3 minutes or until you start to get those little brown bits on the bottom of the pan.
Add the onion and stir with the ham, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Saute for about 2 minutes.
Add half of the collard greens and allow to cook down some, about 1 minute or so.
Add the last of the collard greens and stir until the greens, onions and ham are combined.
Cook over medium high heat for about 2 minutes.
Add 1 1/2 cups water, salt and pepper and stir. Allow to come to a boil over medium heat.
Reduce temperature to low and simmer for 30 minutes, adjusting heat to maintain a constant simmer but not let it boil.
Serve at leisure.
Now, you must remember that I am a New England born & bred collard greens virgin. I was impressed by this recipe – my husband too, but what do we know? And my 4 year old ate them!
But the true test was not my 4 1/2 year old (who will eat anything with a little salt and/or ham in it). No, the true test was my colleague, Laura.
Here’s Laura with her grandson Ethan:
Laura, who is a Director of Customer Management for NuVal, lives and works in North Carolina. She is a true Southern gal. I think that there are even some beauty pageants in her past history! She is prim and proper, always courteous and hospitable, and she has a lovely Southern accent. Laura makes the trek up to the NuVal office in Boston about once a month or so, and when she does, I will often bring her something home-cooked or some fresh vegetables. Laura likes to eat nutritiously and I know how hard it is when you are staying in a hotel. So, I brought her some of these collard greens. And she gave them a good ole Southern thumbs up!
One of my goals for 2010 is to keep cooking through that unfamiliar corner of the Produce department. You know, the one with all the leafy greens. What should I make next?
Question of the Day
What vegetable are you curious about?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: collard greens, Incredible Vegetables
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 07:25 AM
Oh, Brussels Sprouts, how I adore thee!
Sounds like the lyrics to some kind of vegetarian Christmas Carol, doesn’t it? Or some kind of Elizabethan sonnet. I really do love, love, love Brussels Sprouts, especially when they are roasted in the oven with a little olive oil & Kosher salt.
So how did we fall in love? I always had a little crush on these little round vegetables. But it was the time we spent together in London (circa 1996) that moved me from mild infatuation to deep, irresistable passion. The Brussels Sprouts that I ate in a small theater-district restaurant while on a two-week assignment for Big Consulting Company, were not the usual big, over-cooked, water-logged variety that we sometimes see stateside. They were tiny and tender and succulent. Parting from Heathrow was such sweet sorrow.
Back in the US, I soon found that I could replicate some of the ardor that I had experienced in that London eatery, right there in my own kitchen. The key was to find Brussels Sprouts on a stalk.
Aren’t they magnificent?
Check around your produce section to find this gem. They tend to show up in fall and winter. I bought this one for $3.99 at Stop & Shop. It’s a far better deal than Brussels Sprouts packaged in a cup. My husband always knows when I’ve found The Stalk because he hears me shriek in excitement from across the Produce Department.
The Fooducate Blog recently featured a post on Brussels Sprouts and gave a very good explanation of why most people don’t like them. Fooducate explains, “An overcooked Brussels sprout is mushy, bitter, and smells bad. This is because too much heat releases glucosinolate sinigrin, responsible for a stinky sulfurous odor and flavor.” Who knew?
My favorite recipe for Brussels Sprouts comes from Cooking Light.
Brussels Sprouts with Browned Garlic
6 cups trimmed Brussels sprouts, halved (about 2 pounds)
1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
Cooking spray
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the Brussels sprouts, 1 1/2 teaspoons oil, salt, and pepper. Place sprouts mixture in a 13 X 9 inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes or until sprouts are crisp-tender. Keep warm.
Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add garlic, and cook for 3 minutes or until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; stir in juice. Add to sprouts mixture; toss well.
The best part about my love affair with Brussels Sprouts is that there is no guilt: they score a 94 on the NuVal scale.
My children will not touch these suckers. More for Mommy!!! My husband is not a huge fan either, although he will munch on a few, just to see if the ecstasy is contagious.
One word of caution: Brussels Sprouts do leave a certain, traceable aroma in your kitchen after roasting. Last night, while my husband was working late, I roasted up a big batch for today’s blog post. When my husband came home, he knew. “Honey, tell the truth. Have you been cooking Brussels Sprouts again?” I was caught in the act.
Question of the Day
What fruits or vegetables are you passionate about?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Brussels Sprouts, Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Brussels Sprouts, Incredible Vegetables
