Kale Chips: Greens for Picky Kids!

Convincing my grandson Felix to eat green vegetables can be tricky, although my other grandson, Theo, eats just about anything we offer him.

A few months back I blogged about the importance of greens and posted a recipe for a yummy kale salad. Obviously, Felix wanted no part of the salad when Maia made it, so I was challenged to find a way to get kale into him. I succeeded with kale chips!

There are two versions of kale chips:

1.    The cooked variety, which are super easy to prepare.
2.    For the raw foodists…a raw recipe. (I have recently become something of a raw foodist again, which I’ll talk more about another time).

Easy Cooked Kale Chips

Ingredients

• 1 head of kale, washed and thoroughly dried (it’s really important to dry the kale completely)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• Sea salt, for sprinkling

Preparation

• Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.
• Remove the ribs from the kale and cut into about 1 1/2-inch pieces (you don’t want the pieces too small)
• Lay kale on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil and salt.
• Bake until crisp, about 20 minutes. You can turn the leaves halfway through if you want to, but I have found that it’s not necessary. Serve as finger food.

Raw Kale Chips

This version of kale chips requires a dehydrator and more planning and time. The funny thing about raw food is that it isn’t always simple like it sounds! If you get serious about eating mostly raw and you plan to prepare it yourself, you will probably need to invest in a dehydrator (the best dehydrators are expensive).

Ingredients

• 1 large bunch of kale, washed, large stems removed, torn into bite size pieces
• 1 cup raw cashews (soaked 2 hours)
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tbs nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt (I suggest Himalayan pink crystal salt)

Preparation

• Put all ingredients except for kale in a food processor. Blend until smooth.
• Using your hands, massage coating onto kale pieces, getting it inside of curls.
• Put on teflex sheets and dehydrate at 105 degrees overnight or until coating is dry.
• Slide onto mesh screens and dehydrate 12 hours, or until very crispy.

Be well,