Juicing NOT! and More Recipes

I have a large amount of kale in my fridge. Before last Saturday I had never even eaten kale to the best of my  knowledge and certainly had never bought it before. But we were trying out a borrowed juicer and the juicing recipe called for kale, juicers use a lot of veggies to make one glass of juice so I bought two large bunches of kale.  As for juicing, what a pain, and what a waste, all of the fiber is made waste, although the juice is packed full of the nutrients from the veggies, it takes a lot to make a little. And then the machine, it takes a long time to slowly process the veggies through, then the clean up, this gets boring very quickly. There are 6 parts to the machine, it has to be entirely disassembled washed, dried, and put back together, I was so done with it after juicing experience number three. Thank heavens we were able to borrow a juicer, and I am sure it was available for borrowing because the owner to had tired of the work involved.  Much better to simply eat your veggies and enjoy all the benefits of the food they way God intended.

Anyway, what to do with all of this kale???? After a google search it seems that many people like sauteed kale with scrambled eggs. I like scrambled eggs and the idea of sauteed kale didn't seem bad so I made it and it was EXTREMELY EXCELLENT.  I used the leafy part from about 5 or 6 kale leaves and cooked them in a little olive oil, gave them a good stir around, covered the pot and let them cook for a few minutes. The kale greatly reduced in the heat and mixed very well with the scrambled eggs. And, kale has a great flavor, not to mention it is very high in iron and other nutrients so a good food source. And I am glad I enjoyed as I have quite a bit more kale to eat. Funny thing about kale, the stems are almost inedible, one website mentions saving the stems and using them in soups to cook out the flavor, but they take a long time to cook whereas the leaves cook in no time at all.  So be warned don't use the stems unless you enjoy inedible woody bits in your food, I had one very small piece of stem in my cooked kale I sat it to the side of my plate.

Along with my eggs and kale (makes me think of a book  by Somerset Maugham called Cakes and Ale) I had nutty brown rice. I modified a recipe for nutty rice burgers, keeping what I thought were the good bits, adding some chopped apple, and eliminating the bad such as bread crumbs, egg, and ketchup that I am sure were the binder to hold the mix into burgers.  I had no intention of making burger shapes.

So here is the Nutty Rice Recipe

1 lb of cooked brown rice (I had some bagged in the freezer, left over from a day I cooked too much rice)
1 onion chopped
4 oz chopped mushroom
2T olive oil
2 oz chopped walnuts chopped
2 medium apples diced

Cook the onion and mushroom in olive oil in a large skillet.  Mix in a bowl the cooked brown rice, the chopped walnuts and the diced apple.  Add the rice mix to the skillet, stir everything together. Cover the skillet and let cook over a low heat, you want the apple to cook down to a very soft, yet still together texture.

This is very yummy with nice explosions of sweet apple in each bite.