Kale Gets a Makeover Against Its Will

I love kale. I usually saute it in olive oil and garlic until it's good and wilted. That's pretty much the only way I ever eat it, unless a recipe for a soup or casserole calls for it. After making our yeol-mu kimchi and being sort of wildly excited about having non-cabbage kimchi around, my guy and I got a little ambitious and decided to see what other greens we could ferment the living daylights out of. I got the bright idea to try kale. Turns out it wasn't such a bright idea afterall, because kale is very stubborn. We salted the heck out of it and waited and waited and waited and... nothing. The kale couldn't have cared less that it was drowning in salt. It didn't budge. Not a single wilted leaf. I was disgusted, so I rinsed off all the salt and put the huge lot of it in the fridge. I know I said I love kale, but this was a LOT of kale and a future of eating nothing but kale as my side veggie was really depressing. That's when Green Smoothie Girl rescued me. My sister had sent me this link and I checked out this chic's Youtube video (I don't feel like posting it, just type "green smoothie girl" in the youtube search box; she's the first one who comes up). I watched her put spinach in a smoothie. A smoothie that had bananas and berries in it, like the ones I make for myself just about every day. Then I surfed around and read some message boards on green smoothies and found one that had kale in it. Things were definitely looking up on the kale front. I read that if you freeze fresh kale, it will get crumbly and break up really easily. I threw my massive bag of kale in the freezer and came up with the following "recipe". It actually just tastes like my regular smoothie, so moms--you might even want to try this with the wee ones. They won't even know it's in there. I promise.

Kale Banana Strawberry Smoothie

makes: 1 serving

1 cup soy milk* (I use WestSoy Organic Unsweetened)
a drizzle of maple syrup (honey would work too, I'm sure)
crumbled up frozen kale (as much as you think you can handle)
half a frozen banana
4-5 frozen strawberries

*Use more or less, depending on how thick you like your smoothies.

Put the soy milk in the blender and add the maple syrup. Throw in the kale and whiz it on high speed until the kale is unrecognizable and it just looks like you have green milk in there. Add the banana and strawberries and blend until smooth.

That's it. Like Green Smoothie Girl mentioned in her video, if you use berries they'll mask the green color, so your smoothie will look a little less healthy and probably be more appealing.