I wouldn’t call them chips exactly.

So kale is the darling of food bloggers this year it seems.  You can’t read a food blog or visit some sort of food/recipe site without someone rhapsodizing about how great kale is.

Ok.  I’m good with how good kale is for  you.  It’s some kind of superfood, protecting against heart disease and diabetes and probably other stuff but I’m too lazy to finish reading the article.  

The problem, for me anyway, is that kale isn’t exactly what you’d call tasty.  Not without adding a bunch of stuff to it.  Like nuts and seeds and fruit.  Which means the Hubs will not eat it.  He’s not a picky eater he claims, yet I’ve never met a grown man who has so many rules and restrictions as to what he will and will not eat and how he’ll eat food.  Eeeesh.

But still.  Kale = goodness.  And 2012 is supposed to be the Year of Me, although that plan is getting off to a sloooooooow start.  Anyway, I figure that it can’t hurt and hey, I might actually like it.

So imagine my surprise to find a recipe for kale chips.  It’s actually from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook My Father’s Daughter (which is surprisingly good).  I like chips.  A lot.  So I was pretty stoked to find a way to make my favourite unhealthy snack well, healthy.

After a failed first attempt (it would help to have the recipe book with me not upstairs in my office) I decided to try again.  I also “massaged” the kale, something I read somewhere on a food blog that explained it would make the kale tastier.  Odd but it can’t hurt.  

I oiled it up (the kale…this is a PG blog you know), salted it and baked it at 400C for 12 minutes.  The end result was, well, strangely good, but it’s not a chip.  More like a crispy leaf that’s been salted.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad tasting by any stretch, but a potato chip it is not.  And never will be.

But it is a oddly addictive snack that IS better for me than potato chips.  And a little goes a long way.  One bunch of kale makes a big container of “chips” and as much of a salty/savoury/food fan that I am, even I can’t eat that much salted baked kale.  And it’s probably a good thing given all the fibre in it.  Tomorrow might be unpleasant.

So I’ll give you this one food bloggers.  You’re right.  Kale is good.  But it’s not a chip.