Kale in December

I promised some pictures of my flowering kale and here it is as it looks today, December 23, 2013. The snow melted and we may get more snow this week. The kale is protected under the snow and when we finish using the kale in our front flower bed, I will walk to the garden and pick more. The flowering kale looks beautiful this time of year when there is nothing in bloom outside in Cleveland, Ohio. Per the Italian Heirloom Kale, I harvested leaves from the bottom and ended up with a very tall plant!

The pinks and purples in the flowering kale are beautiful, and our local market sells this same flowering kale for $2.99 per pound and up! If you plant flowering kale in your garden, make sure it has not been treated, sprayed to be used only as a flower. I buy the flowering kale in the spring when I plant my early vegetables and the tiny sprouts stay green most of the summer, turning their gorgeous purple and pink after the first cold days and frost.

Kale is much healthier than spinach and is promoted in various diets, it flies off the shelves here in Cleveland, but my favorite is the Italian Heirloom, and then the flowering kale. Each kale tastes
different, and I avoid the varieties that have any bitterness.

Growing Kale in Your Garden

Some of the heirloom kale varieties found in organic grocery stores may be a bit pricey, but there is a very simple solution -- grow your favorite kale in your garden!

One may have to do a bit of testing to see which kale variety one prefers and which one grows best (without any of that slight bitter taste) in your area.

Kale loves cool weather, but mine is doing great this summer --- my favorite was flowering kale, until I planted an Italian heirloom kale. I have not noticed any bitterness in our summer heat per the Italian heirloom, but have noticed a slight bitter taste (which disappears after the first frost) in my flowering kale, which is growing very fast and actually started to flower (I picked the flowers off -- the flowers look very much like the ones on related species -- the yellowish flowers on thin stems).

Each day I pick the largest leaves of the Italian heirloom, and the kale continues to grow. I know that the flowering kale will survive until almost January, 2014, under the snow and will be a welcome treat.
I do not know if the Italian heirloom will survive the winter as it is very tall and will probably not be protected by the snows.

My husband and I have a "kale" smoothie almost every evening using the "Italian" heirloom kale.
We strip the leaves from the long stem, add it to the blender set on ice-crushing, add a banana and sometimes whatever berries we might have in the house, and almond milk (my husband is allergic to
dairy), add a few ice cubes sometimes and blend to perfection -- photos to follow. Sometimes
we use bananas we have previously frozen and skip the ice.

Please share any and all recipes for kale on this blog -- keep in touch as photographs are to follow!

Kale Chips

Kale chips are easy to make and take only 10 minutes to bake in the oven.

To make the chips, place some aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and spray the foil with cooking spray.

Wash the kale and strip it from the stems -- do not use the stems for making chips as they are tough and need a longer cooking time, such as in a homemade soup.

Tear the kale into pieces and place on the sprayed aluminum foil. Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes, but watch the kale as just a few minutes longer and the kale will turn brown and be crumbly not crispy!

Enjoy a healthy snack alternative!

For St. Patrick's Day

A beautiful light green smoothie for everyone on St. Patrick's Day is so easy to make and healthy. 

Ingredients:

A few leaves of Kale (washed and torn into pieces)
Banana (1 medium ripe)
Rice, Soy, or Almond Milk (1 cup)

Place all the ingredients in a blender on the highest setting and blend until smooth!

Enjoy!

New Year's Pretzels of the Past

Baking pretzels for the New Year has been a tradition in our family as it was in my mother's family. It is incredible how much better the pretzels look when my mother was at our house to share them with us, compared to when I made them alone, this lonely New Year's Eve without her.

I will never forget her incredibly beautiful smile when we made and shared New Year's pretzels each year.

If you share a tradition with your mother, or even if you don't, enjoy every moment with your Mom,  and take pictures!

                                                                           

New Years Pretzels - Happy New Year 2013!

                           

A family tradition in some parts of Germany is the baking of New Year's pretzels. The pretzels are big, soft on the inside, and chewy on the outside. Some make them a bit sweet and frost them, but the tradition in our family, passed down to me by my mother, Louise, is to make them plain with a bit of egg wash and only enough sugar to make sure the yeast is proofing (alive). The pretzel is more like the big pretzels sold by vendors than the small crunchy pretzels sold in bags. My mother liked the pretzel to have some crunchiness on the bottom.

Below is my modified recipe for those who may not eat dairy and fat as it includes milk and butter, followed by a more traditional recipe. My "no fat, no dairy" pretzels would look prettier if I would brush them with an egg wash, but we do not mind that they do not have the traditional shiny coating as I brush them with a bit of Rice Milk.

I use White Whole Wheat flour today, but in years past I used regular unbleached flour. I have never made them with regular Whole Wheat flour. If I were using only regular Whole Wheat Flour, I would mix the whole wheat with the unbleached at about 50-50.

                                      No Fat, No Dairy Pretzels 

                                                                       
Modified recipe for the above two large pretzels:

1 cup lukewarm Rice Milk (I am sure Almond, Soy milk or water would work too) (250 ml)
2 teaspoons yeast (one packet of yeast is fine at 2 1/4 tsp)
2 teaspoons sugar

I always use the same amount of sugar as yeast, but some prefer "sweet" pretzels and use as much as 1/3 cup sugar (50-60 grams). We prefer our pretzels not to be sweet. I mix the above and allow it to sit about 10 minutes to make sure the mixture smells yeasty and that I see some bubbles after a few minutes, to prove to me that the yeast is alive. I do not use metal utensils and never use a metal bowl when baking with yeast.

Beat one egg and add it to the above yeast mixture
3-4 cups of flour (500 grams) (add a bit at a time until the dough is workable)

Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes and place in a covered bowl to proof until it doubles in height.

After the first proofing, form the dough into a long roll and into a pretzel shape on a greased baking sheet (I use a spray like PAM on my baking sheets, as hate to have the baked dough stick to the sheet and ruin the shape of the pretzels. Parchment paper is good too, but spray the baking sheet before putting down the parchment or the parchment paper might get into the pretzel dough. The spray holds the parchment paper on to the sheet and keeps it from getting into the pretzel).

Let the formed pretzel proof about another hour, brush with Rice Milk and bake for about 30 minutes in a preheated oven at 375 degrees F. (Brushing with an egg yolk makes the most beautiful shiny crust, but my pretzels pictured were brushed only with a bit of Rice Milk).

I proof all of my yeast products in my cold oven as the area has no drafts and is out of the way.

Below is a sweeter and a bit softer recipe in which the dough is more like a Challah (egg) bread,
which is traditional:

1 cup milk (250 ml)
2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast (1 package)
4 Tablespoons melted butter (60 grams)
1/3 cup sugar (50-60 grams)  (this is a lot of sugar for my family and all but 2 tsp can be omitted)


1 egg beaten 
Zest of one lemon
3-4 cups of flour (500 grams) (add a bit at a time until the dough is workable)

1 egg yolk for brushing the pretzels before baking.

In this recipe, dissolve the yeast in the cup of milk and add 2 teaspoons of the total sugar and set
aside for about 15 minutes to make sure the yeast is alive. Add the melted butter being careful not
too add a hot liquid and kill the yeast, sugar, and flour and knead for about 10 minutes as in the
no fat recipe.

Proof the dough twice as in the no fat, no dairy recipe, and brush the pretzel with the egg yolk before placing it in the oven. The egg wash gives this pretzel the most beautiful shiny coat.

I have seen the pretzel braided, reminiscent of a Challah (egg) bread, and shaped in the pretzel shape.

What fascinates me is that Challah bread is baked in a round shape for the Jewish New Year and the New Year's Pretzel is a similar type dough, but eaten for the calendar New Year.

From what I have read, the New Year's pretzel is traditional in the county of Baden, in Bavaria, and in the city of my birth, Karlsruhe, Germany, it is not known in all of Germany!

Thus, although my parents were raised in different faiths as children, the same type of dough was traditional for their respective New Year's celebration! I don't know if anyone has ever made this connection!

The pretzels are traditionally eaten for breakfast on New Year's day which in our house is about one minute into the New Year.

Enjoy the pretzels and as the tile says "Let it Snow." My sweet niece who lives in Texas sent the tile mentioning her baby girl, my great-niece!

                         

                                                                     

Pumpkin Bread without Pumpkin? Pumpkinless Pumpkin Bread!

As I was making pumpkin bread, I wondered why I needed four times the liquid I usually use. As I looked at my very dry batter I thought, "Wow, this whole wheat flour seems to need much liquid today."

I added the extra liquid and wondered why white whole wheat flour would demand so much more liquid that whole wheat "pastry" flour?

I made the batter and  filled up the same two loaf pans, which I regularly use to bake pumpkin bread. What I had added to this pumpkin bread was two cups of raisins and cut up dried apricots to make the "pumpkin" bread more like a fruit cake.

When the bread was baking I realized that I had forgotten to put the solid packed pumpkin, a 29 ounce can, into the batter! My husband said "take it out of the oven and add the pumpkin," but I told him it is much too late and we are now baking an "experiment."

Herein is a picture of my "pumpkinless" pumpkin bread which my husband says he likes very much, in fact, he might like it more than the normal "pumpkin" bread I have made in the past! The recipe has no oil, no eggs, and no dairy. One can see the raisins in the bread, but the diced apricots are more difficult to see in the photograph.

To my surprise, my husband says he loves this "pumpkin" bread! He said this is the best pumpkin bread every. This "pumpkin" bread has no eggs, no oil, no dairy, and no PUMPKIN!

Kale and Kale

My favorite kale variety to date is the Russian Purple Kale which turns completely purple after a frost. The kale appears to be more tender than other varieties and the color is superb, however, I noticed the kale turning from dark purple to a very dark green as I was cooking it. I immediately added a bit of lemon hoping to preserve as much of the purple color as possible.

Per my previous posts where the stem of the kale did not soften on cooking, I have found that the stem of some varieties becomes tender on cooking and the stems of other varieties remain almost woody.

I found frozen kale in one store, Whole Foods, and have it in the freezer for those occasions when I can not get to the fresh market, such as on very snowy days as today!

                                                                                 

I have been putting kale in everything from stir fry to soups and we continue to love it.

I will be searching for kale seed as it gets closer to spring and hope to plant several varieties in my garden.

I have found that the flowering kale in my flower garden, is the most delicious and tender kale of all and it is safe under the snow outside until I am ready to pick it. One of our local vegetable markets sells the flowering kale as a vegetable and it is the most expensive of the kales at our store, definitely worth planting for its beautiful color, tenderness and taste in cooking!

Kale Stems

                                                                             
The kale stems which were separated from the leafy kale turned out to be tough no matter
how long I seemed to cook them. They seemed to be fibrous, yet the kale's leafy blades were tender.

I am glad that I did not cook the stems along with the kale, and that I removed the stems from the kale stalk.

Although once cleaned-up and sliced on the diagonal for a pretty presentation, the stalks proved to be inedible! The color is beautiful in the raw sliced stalks below, but not chewable.

                                                                                   
I purchased the kale at a wonderful local fruit and vegetable market. I will try kale stems again, just in case the stems were tough on only the type of kale which I purchased.

As one of my favorite cooks on HGTV would say to such stems if she tossed them in the trash,

                                     "Thanks kale stems for visiting!"

Thanksgiving

This will be our first Thanksgiving on a semi-vegetarian diet, I say "semi" as I do not plan on buying meat, but plan to start using up what I have in the freezer, but only serve meat once a week. We had Cheerios for breakfast along with a tablespoon of ground flax seed, which we purchased at Costco after listening to Dr. Esselstyn's lecture last Saturday and being inspired to eat healthier by his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn.

Dr. Esselstyn mentioned that we need to avoid sucrose. I just bought ten pounds of sugar for holiday baking and hope sugar lasts for a very long time. Dr Esselstyn does not suggest using Stevia or sugar substitutes and I seem to have more than a few varieties in my kitchen! Dr. Esselstyn does not promote maple syrup or honey either, sugar is a "no, no."

I know I will have to modify recipes as sugar is a liquid in baking, but for cooking I can easily come up with some quick fixes.

I purchased fresh cranberries and wondered how to sweeten them for my cranberry relish. After thinking about, since my family loves bananas, I decided to add the usual apple and orange to the cranberries and chop them up in the blender or food chopper. I started in the blender and decided to use the sweetest fruit I have in the house, other than dates. I added a sweet Yellow Delicious apple and an orange to the cranberries as I usually do. I did not add the usual 1/4-1/2 cup of sugar as I usually do.

I saw two ripe bananas on my counter and dates from California. I decided to put the two bananas in my Ninja chopper and puree them into a soft, creamy consistency. I poured the pure banana "syrup" over the cranberry/apple/orange relish and gently folded the banana, which turned to a liquid, into the mixture.

The relish is just sweet enough, perfectly sweet, and we do not mind the banana flavor in our cranberry relish and have the benefit of not having to use sugar!

Grocery Shopping

I went grocery shopping to today, the first time I have shopped since we attended Dr Esselstyn's lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday. I am thankful that my husband came to the lecture and that he accompanied me grocery shopping. Because he went to the lecture and heard so much about kale, my husband was interested in seeing kale in our local market.

I always grow flowering kale in my yard and have cooked it in the past, only to have to eat it by myself. However, after attending the lecture, my husband not only tasted the kale both raw and cooked, but helped prepare it, by stripping the leafy areas from the stem as Dr. Esselstyne's wife demonstrated.

To strip the kale, take a leaf and hold the stem in your right hand and strip the softer leafy areas, away from the stem in one continuous motion. My husband is actually better at this than I am.

We used the kale tonight as we would have used pasta, the base for a vegetarian bean and barley chili.

Having lived in Cincinnati for 14 years, combining homemade chili with pasta is natural. Substituting cooked and slightly chopped kale for the pasta, was not only delicious, but a way to disguise kale for the non-kale eating world! My husband loved it and so did I!

I used about a cup of dried black beans, 1/2 cup of red pinto beans, and put them in a put, and just covered them with cold water. Per the instructions on the bean package, I boiled them for two minutes and let them sit for about an hour before continuing the cooking process. The directions say that the beans will cook in two hours, but they are always a bit too hard for us at the two-hour stage. I prefer to cook them twice the time stated on the package, add more liquid, about 1 cup of spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, or even sausa taking up too much room in my refrigerator! I had at least a teaspoon of cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder and ab out a cup of each of chopped onions, celery, and carrots.

I had cooked the kale until tender, the mass of kale barely made two generous servings for the base of a bowl of chili!

Notice how the kale quickly cooked down. I have flowering kale in my yard, but don't want to pick it yet.
I also purchased a huge cabbage and plan to make "stuffed cabbage casserole" without using meat.

We may find ourselves between Dr. Dean Ornish's diet and that of Dr; Esselstyn, but in any case, we were energized to include more crucifers in our diet and hope to make kale a regular visitor at our house!

Have you ever seen such a huge cabbage?

The stripped kale filled up the pot, but watch how it shrinks after cooking.

The kale cooked down in the picture below where it turned from a bright green to a very deep green.

Below is how the kale looked after stripping the leafy areas from the stalks using the method which Dr. Esselstyn's wife showed at the lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday.

I took the stems of the stalks and cut them on a slant into bite size pieces which I plan to cook tomorrow for lunch with our left over vegetarian bean and barley chili. Mrs. Ellelstyn mentioned that she cut the stems on a slant, and I think that cutting the stems into equal pieces on a slant, may speed up the cooking process.

Below is the large pot of vegetarian bean and barley chili cooking on the stove. I cooked it for more than four hours. After about three hours I blended some of the bean and barley mixture in the blender and pureed the mixture before putting it back in to the pot.

                               Yum, it is so much better than I expected!

Vegan Diets

Went to Dr. Esselstyn's (Cleveland Clinic) very interesting lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday and was impressed with his wife's input (granddaughter of the founder of the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Crile)  -- found a portion of the lecture on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKNfyUPzoU

Discussion emphasizes, but not limited to heart issues from arrhythmias to attacks, and Dr. Esselstyn and his wife talk about cancer prevention (he was a breast surgeon).

No dairy, no meat, no oil, no sugar are key, he says eat nothing which has a mother or a face, in the plant-based diet.

Have followed Dean Ornish for years per my husband's diet. Dr. Esselstyn's is a bit stricter, but the same theme.

I will check out Dr. Esselstyn's recipes and see if we might try the program, but in any case, we will be making more trips to the fresh fruit and vegetable markets and I will plant more flowering kale in my garden next spring!

I am looking forward to reading his book and his son's book!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust- Review

I make the pizza crust using about 1/2 to 2/3rds whole wheat flour and the remaining 1/3-1/2 of the flour mixture being unbleached flour.

I usually make crusts for two huge pizzas and have sometimes have dough left over to make a small bread for sandwiches, depending on how big I make the pizzas.

The recipe I commit to memory is easy to member:

4 teaspoons yeast (I buy it in bulk from Costco and love their yeast)
4 cups lukewarm water (I microwave cold water from the tap until lukewarm, never use warm tap water)
4 teaspoons sugar

I mix the above together in a huge nonmetallic bowl. I do not use metal measuring spoons or let anything metal get near my yeast mixture, which is a living organism.

I wait a few minutes to see if the mixture changes in any way, such as seeing bubbles or anything different and then carefully add the flour.

                                                                     

I add 8 cups of flour (using my 2 cup measuring cup this is again, 4 loads of flour) slowly while mixing the batter until my batter becomes a dough. This morning my dough was too sticky, so I added almost another load (2 cups) of the flour mixture (half and half, whole wheat and unbleached) and continued to mix together with a wooden spoon.

Because I hate to cleanup, I knead the soft dough in the same large mixing bowl for a few minutes using either wetted hands or oily hands -- placing a bit of oil on my hands before kneading the dough, keeps it from sticking to my hands.

After kneading for a few minutes, I form the dough into a round ball, sprinkle a bit of flour on top of it, cover it with a clean kitchen towel and place it in a safe place. It is important to keep the dough away from cold drafts as that will slow down the growth of the yeast. The best place I have found to raise yeast dough is in my oven (turned off).

                                                                           

Some place the dough in the refrigerator and let it rise overnight. I have done this on occasion, but since I am usually making the pizza for dinner, I let it raise in a warm place.

                                                                               

When the dough in my bowl rises to double the size that it was when I first placed it in the cold oven, it is time to punch it down, and place it in the greased pizza pans to let it rise for a second time.

                                                                             

If one can toss the dough as seen on TV, one gets an incredible hand tossed crust. Hand tossing really improves the texture of the crust. I am not an expert at hand tossing the dough, but if I have time, I gently
toss it from one hand to the other and let it enlarge.

When I do not have time to hand toss, which is most of the time, I place about 1/3 of the dough in a pizza pan and press it to the edges of the pan, and leave it alone again until double in bulk.

When my pizza dough has doubled in bulk, I will edit this blog to add additional photographs!

Easy Colorful Vegetarian Pizza

I get much color in my homemade vegetarian pizza from buying green peppers that have some color on them. This saves me the trouble of buying yellow and orange peppers as I look for those colors on a green pepper. If I buy a red pepper and a green one with yellow and orange sides, it adds much color to a homemade vegetarian pizza. Onions add much flavor and I microwave all the vegetables gently to reduce the vegetable juice exuding from the vegetables onto my pizza.

One can easily spot the liquid left in a bowl after the vegetables are microwaved for a minute or two before adding them to the homemade pizza crust covered with sauce.

For pizza sauce, I have found that there are many options and everything works! Sometimes I mix a can of tomato paste with a bit of ketchup, sometimes I use spaghettis sauce or if I have a plentiful tomato harvest, I have placed fresh tomatoes on my pizza. I love putting basil sauce on my pizza too.

The peppers give the pizza much color and along with the onions, much flavor. I selected green  peppers with some color.

                                     
I cut one of the green peppers and a red pepper into small pieces to make the pizza below:

                                                                                                                 
My husband asked me to make pizza today and I will mix the yeast, lukewarm water, sugar, and whole wheat flour, and let it rise while I finish my blog and run errands!