Craving for kale

While on the road, eating healthy may become a challenging task. Usually I take a little cooler with my road trip "assistants": baby carrots, apples, water, and a rye bread.  I just love combination of rye bread with apples and baby carrots! And it is good fiber, that fills you up without that heavy "oh-why-did-I-eat-so-much-I-can't-drive" syndrome.
Drive from Fort Smith to Dallas takes usually 4 hours, and our snacks were enough. In Dallas we stayed overnight  in one of the airport hotels, our flight to Las Vegas  was next day early in the morning, so for dinner that night we just went for Veggie Delight at Subway.
Next day our lunch was in Las Vegas with many options: from gastronomic extravaganza of Mario Batali's and Emeril Lagasse's restaurants to simplicity of  food courts. To our delight and a big surprise, we found an Indian place at the Riviera hotel with a whole section of vegetarian dishes on the menu.  In five days  we didn't even go through the entire list. But what we had was delicious, light, healthy, inspiring, and energizing...
However, on the third day of our stay in Vegas I was craving for ... Kale! My mission was to go to Whole Foods after lunch and buy a bunch of kale. 
That day we decided to have lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I ordered taco salad, went to condiments station and was stunned by the scene: all salsas, guacamole, dressings, and etc.  was sitting on the bed of kale!!! I almost screamed. I asked one of the servers if I can have one kale. He gave me a very puzzled look. I asked him again if I can have some garnish. I think at some moment he lost his ability to speak. But finally I was rewarded with one leaf of kale and proudly walked back to my table, holding that kale as a prize. Then, I teared a small piece off the stem, places some taco salad on it, and enjoyed every bite of my new invention with my eyes closed. When I returned to the reality of the dining room,  I noticed a  few restaurant guests looking at me. I praised them with a happy smile... Kale smile...

***

Kale Smile Salad

Ingredients:

1 avocado
1 bunch of organic kale
1 tbsp of lemon juice
3-4 sun dried tomatoes

1. Boil some water. Cut sun dried tomatoes into small pieces, place it in a small ball and pour boiling water over tomatoes to cover it. Let it stay while you are preparing the rest. Be careful with hot water!

2. Cut avocado in half, remove the pit and separate flash from the skin. Place the avocado flesh in a ball, add lemon juice and mash it with a fork.  Set aside.

3. Wash kale, tear off leaves from  the stem, braking it to a desired size. I like it a bite size.  Discard the stems or compost it. 
Use a salad spinner to remove excess of water. Without a spinner,  wrap a kitchen towel around the kale and gently pat. You don't have to remove every drop of the water. 

4. Place the kale in a mixing bowl, add avocado dressing and sun dried tomatoes (remove it from the water with a fork), and using your clean hands mix it well so all kale and tomatoes are coated in avocado dressing.

5. Cover and place in a refrigerator for about 30 min. I know, you are hungry. But this salad needs to rest a little.
Leave the kitchen, and go for a walk!
You'll be rewarded when you get back to this salad 30 minutes later.




Those pieces are sun dried tomatoes, not a bacon!



Enjoy it as a dish, or add any side of your choice.

Kale is so good for you that even if you never had it or don't like it, eat kale for it's benefits
(here is a great web reference about the kale: 
 http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=38).


Now, how about having a national His Majesty Kale holiday every Tuesday? I promise, after a few Kale Tuesdays you'll crave for that kale too....

Until next time,
Cowboy Country Vegetarian