Monday Non-Recipe - pre-Thanksgiving and eating out

So this weekend I barely had five minutes of unspoken for time. Cooking? Totally out of the question. But this, of course, meant that I had plenty of yummy food prepared by other people.

Friday

Chinatown - chicken cooked Chinese style with garlic, scallions, and soy sauce (bone in). The waiters in Chinatown must be weirded out by me, because the guy asked me three times if that's what I really wanted, because it was cooked Chinese style (not a regular rice plate). It was really yummy (though slightly undercooked). Even better was the dou mieu (totally not the right pinyin transliteration, and I don't remember what tone it is, but I learned this time around that it's called peapod shoots in English). It's a big plate of greens (pictured left), kind of like spinach, cooked in oil. I ate nearly the entire plate (and it wasn't a small plate). I only eat it once or twice a year, and it's one of my favorites ever.
Kickball party - beer, beer, beer, neon blue shot of something or other, beer.

Saturday

P's birthday party - lots of little tasters of food, all very yummy - vegetarian Chinese potstickers, red pepper flake goat cheese, goat cheese with spices (maybe dill?), dark chocolate with red pepper, milk chocolate with toffee, kettlecorn (popcorn that's salty and sweet all at once), homemade pesto, and plenty plenty of wine flowing. Yumminess of yumminess.

Sunday

Game On batting cages - Game On is a bar in Fenway Park, and they had an event where you go and hit in the batting cages. I had thought it was going to be in Fenway, so I was a little disappointed to find out we'd be in the bar the whole time. But the good thing was that we were indoors, so we didn't totally freeze. I got to hit twice in the batting cages (aluminum bat, ouch on the sting from contact with the ball), and got some action pictures of me batting. They also had food (burgers and sausage) that were perfectly passable.

I had planned to go to a potluck Sunday night, but by the time I got home from the game I was tired and just needed some time to relax.

Planned recipe of the week

Kale Chips
I haven't tried them yet, but they sound intriguing. You rip a bunch of kale off the stems and put them on a baking tray. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper and then bake on high heat (400-500) for 30-60 seconds. I'll let you know how they come out!

Monday Recipe - Food for Exhaustion

So Boston Mania was this weekend. More details to come on that (I may expand Exercise Wednesday to Tuesday and Wednesday this week). One of the by products, apart from excitement over all the new stuff I learned, is absolute exhaustion.

I took it easy on Friday, but then over Saturday and Sunday I went to enough Step (I can't take it easy in step) and boot camp and bosu strength classes that by the time this morning rolled around, my gluts were seriously complaining about climbing any stairs at all. A good kind of pain though!

Saturday night, I got home around 7:30. I didn't feel like cooking, but I didn't have anything defrosted and ready to go in my fridge (thinking ahead? Ahem...not so much this weekend). So this was my dinner:

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Pork chops with sweet potato fries and brussels sprouts
1 pork chop, fat cut off
dash of salt, pepper, ginger powder, and red pepper flakes
1 sweet potato, cut into thick fry-shapes
2 handfuls of brussels sprouts, cut in half
olive oil
salt and pepper

I put all the sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts in a bowl, sprinkled olive oil, salt and pepper over them until fairly well covered (but not slathered), and then spread them out on a baking tray. On another tray (I use a glass pie-plate), I put the pork sprinkled with spices. Pop all of it in the oven at the same time and jump in the shower while it cooks. The only thing I'd do differently would be to not cook the sprouts as much, because by the time the fries and pork were cooked, the sprouts were fairly mushy.

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Sunday, I was even more tired (as you can imagine, since my first workshop (at 7a) was Group Xtreme). I got home around 2. Made some pasta with butter, grated asiago (no, I didn't grate it myself), and some jalapeno chicken sausage.

By the time dinner rolled around, I just didn't have the energy to cook up some protein on the stove. Some I made some kale, then I had some steamed edamame (I just put frozen edamame in a bowl with some water, cover with paper towel, and then cook in the microwave for 2-3 minutes). Then I had some cherry apple crisp for dessert (I did defrost this the other day, so it was good to go).

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Wilted Kale
1 bunch of kale, stems removed, and ripped into bite-sized pieces
olive/grapeseed oil
garlic
lemon juice
red pepper flakes

Put all the kale in a pot and add oil (I used olive oil steeped in garlic, but you could just put the oil with a couple cloves separately). Wilt down a bit. Add lemon juice (a couple squirts), red pepper flakes, and then salt and pepper if desired.

I ate the whole thing, but it could easily be 2 or 3 servings if you're eating it as a side dish. It makes about one heaping bowl of kale.

Kale - that's a vegetable, right?

The other day, I was reading a post on Charlotte's blog about eating veggies and one of the comments mentioned kale cooked in garlic. At that point, the amount of kale I've eaten in my entire life could be summed up to a big fat plate of nothing. I had the basic idea that it was a leafy green, but it was always one of those strange veggies that just didn't sound very tasty. I'm all for healthy foods, but this one always seemed to be one of those uber-healthy foods on a par with ezekiel bread, which I have also never tried, but have heard is rather similar to cardboard in taste.

But I couldn't get the idea of kale out of my head, since I'm always up for trying new foods.

So I head to my local farmer's market at noon and pick up a bundle of kale and some baby red potatoes. Then I realize I have NO idea how to cook kale. So I poll my boss on recipes. He blinked and said he'd never considered eating kale in the summer, and explained how if kale is left above 40 degrees for more than 45 minutes, the sugars start turning into starches, making the taste much less sweet. So November kale is tastier apparently. Not giving me much hope for the tastiness of my experiment. But I still hold out hope.

So I haul my kale and potatoes to the gym, and then on home. I pulled all the leaves off the stems, stuck them in a pot with some grapeseed oil and some dabs of garlic and let it wilt down to about one serving.

And man, was it tasty! Kind of like spinach, but not quite. A bit chewier, more of a hearty vegetable. And I didn't even notice the starchiness because of the crazy amounts of garlic I added in. If you want something a little bit fancier, with more flavors than just kale and garlic, try this spicy paprika kale recipe.

So now that I've discovered that kale is really tasty, what are the cool health benefits of it? It's on that ever expanding bandwagon of cancer-prevention veggies (it hasn't made it on any antioxidant lists I've seen, so it doesn't have that same sexy superfood status that blueberries, pomegranate, or goji berries do, but it's just as chock full of antioxidants). For a list of the diseases it prevents (so I don't get bogged down in all that scientific jazz), follow the yellow brick link above. One thing to note is that it's got a huge amount of fiber (one serving is about 10% of your daily value).

Have you tried kale? Any interesting recipes? I'm thinking this is going to replace cooked spinach, so I'm going to need to switch it up now and then. What other foods had you never tried and discovered recently?