If you want to hang out you gotta eat kale

Last week I made a huge crockpot full of kale soup. It was sooooo good. The only thing that would have made it better would be leaving out the kale.*

I was grateful for the soup, of course. Especially grateful that I soaked the kale in a big bowl of salt water until the worms floated to the surface. Mom taught me to always soak broccoli and cauliflower in salt water to force out the worms. Effective, yes. Appetizing, no.


Finding a monarch caterpillar on milkweed is groovy. Peace, man! And milkweed doesn't have a song for ear worms. Kale, on the other hand, has J.J.'s "Cocaine", a song that won't unstick from my head even in salted water:

If you want to hang out

You gotta take her out

Cocaine.

If you want to get down

Down on the ground

Cocaine.

After the soup, there was still half a head of kale in the fridge. Dang. So I made kale pesto. Kale pesto is half-way between rabbit food pellets and silage. You blanch the kale after you get rid of the worms, then drain and squeeze the liquid out in a towel. Lemon juice, olive oil, grated parmesan, a clove or two of garlic (go with one!!), and the kale in your food processor, and voila! Warm up some bagel chips.
The leftover kale pesto is still in the fridge in the morning just waiting to go in my school lunchbox. Driving to school Renee Montagne of NPR's "Morning Edition" is interviewing Sam Dagher of the Wall Street Journal about the situation in Syria:

DAGHER: It was just horrible. I mean to see some of these people who eventually came out - women who were carried on stretchers, others who could barely walk. I mean I met a woman who was 95 and she told me that kids were picking grass in order for her to eat. And then she broke down in tears. 

Trying to eat the garlicky kale concoction on celery sticks all I could think of was the 95 year old woman eating grass. We got a new rabbit for the preschool classroom. A bunny needs to eat lots of grass. It needs to be busy and curious, and to promote calm and peace in the preschool classroom. A bunny can do that. 

Maybe we should send bunnies to Syria. If not rabbits, then humanitarian kale and crockpots.

Marcia Brown's Stone Soup with Kale

*Make very small meatballs with ground Italian sausage and brown. Drain off grease. Put in crockpot with a box of lower sodium chicken broth; a peeled and diced potato; a can of diced tomatoes seasoned with oregano; a half bag of dry white northern beans; a half head of kale washed with veins (and worms) removed, chopped; a couple carrots peeled and chopped; several stalks of celery chopped; a quart or more of water; and a parmesan cheese rind. Most 'specially, O Best Beloved, do not forget the parmesan cheese rind. Cook it on HIGH until it wakes you up in the night, then on LOW for a day or so. Stones and kale optional.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder