From Patch To Plate (F.O.K Kale Chips)

A happier day. A brilliant day. There was sunshine for almost two hours. And so Johnny and I harvested our first ever hoard from the vegetable patch we planted together three months ago.

It wasn’t exactly huge (four radishes and an armful of kale) but whatever. We felt like Tarzan and Cheeta, pushing through the dark green jungle, knife/toddler scissors in hand, looking for the leaves that were ready to cut.

Sure, it rained directly afterwards. But by then we’d gone inside, moved on, and were on the set of We Can Cook instead. I didn’t hold out much hope that the boy would eat the kale crisp concoction we came up with since they are a) “green coloured” and b) apparently very, very good for you and packed with vitamins. In fact, I had no hope at all. But miracles abound, even when you’ve spent the whole week moaning and cursing your luck and irritating everyone around you.

He demolished the entire tray. I managed to sneak ONE into my mouth but only by employing my finest GCSE drama skills and screaming, “OH NO! IS THAT A TIGER IN THE GARDEN?!!!!”

It was a tabby. And yeah, he was a little underwhelmed too. But I had to test the recipe to know whether to recommend them. I do, they’re brilliant.

I did it for you. Your selfless blogger, as always. But if we’ve got to talk about we got out of it… Two hours of fun and some healthy food, completely for free. Fun of the sort I don’t really remember getting from the classes or sticky soft-play centres I was pining for at the beginning of this week or even with the aid of an expensive toy. Fun that both of us actually enjoyed, in each other’s company – learning lots together (instead of him learning and me checking my phone) about how plants grow, how to look after them, how to chop and cook them and the simple satisfaction of enjoying the fruits (should that be ‘veg’?) of our labours.

Jesus, that sounds a little evangelical doesn’t it? Maybe this is the start of my next ‘crazy in pregnancy’ phase… Watch this space.

F.O.K Kale Chips

  • Armful of kale, washed and chopped into big bite size pieces, avoiding thick bits of stalk
  • Big dollop of olive oil, shaken all over the kale which should, by this point, be in a baking tray with a bit of baking parchment under them.
  • Generous shake of ‘insert condiment of your choice here’: so a month or so ago, Tom and I went to Brighton for the day and, since I was deep in my ‘early pregnancy, pure body’ phase (the one that came directly before the ‘mid pregnancy, eat-like-a-starved-pig phase) I bought a load of very strange whole foods including, ermmm, ‘inSpiral raw superfood sprinkles‘. Actually, it’s fantastic, you can use it instead of salt and it’s got a pile of worthy, live-forever ingredients in it that I’d never get round to stocking up on otherwise: flax seeds, sumac, nutritional yeast flakes and even ‘baobab’. I used it on these and it was awesome. Otherwise, if I hadn’t recently had a crazy phase, I’d use salt and cayenne  pepper.
  • Preheat an oven to 180 degrees C, gas mark 4 and stick in the oven for ten mins (they shouldn’t go too brown).
  • Cool, demolish