Kale & White Bean Soup - For Christa

FROM OUR WELL-WORN COPY OF

Click on cover to enlarge - © 1985 Edward Espe Brown/Shambala

Click on recipe to enlarge © 1985 Edward Espe Brown/Shambala

Our Mother's Day post brought a question from Christa, at the Calendula & Concrete blog, about how we use kale, so I thought I'd post one of our all-time favorite bean soup recipes. This delicious soup is just one great way to make use of kale. Try it once and you'll be hooked. We don't use the "cream to finish" option, it's creamy enough as is.

Yum! There's nothin' like a good pot of beans...

We're not vegetarians but we have stacks of vegetarian cookbooks and the Tassajara Recipe Book is full of healthful tasty dishes that please our down-home natural-food loving palates.

Addendum-10 A.M.

We also use kale sauteed or stir-fried with garlic & spices in a similar fashion to the delicious sounding suggestions Roger, of the Dharma Bums blog, left in his comment here, and we often add seeds & nuts (sunflower seeds, shelled pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, pine nuts, etc.) to our greens, sometimes serving them with red quinoa, brown rice, millet, or Indian Rice Grass (when we can get it).

The youngest tenderest leaves of kale are aslo a tasty addition to fresh green salads, where we might combine them with several lettuces and spinach from our garden, as well as with young dandelion leaves (before they flower because they become bitter after flowering), lamb's quarters/goosefoot (chenopodium), or amaranth leaves---three very edible, tasty, and highly nutritional 'weeds' growing in our native plant garden.

Two other cookbooks we often refer to, which might be relevant here, are, 'Greens Glorious GREENS!', by Johnna Albi & Catherine Walthers, and, 'Hot & Spicy & Meatless', by Dave DeWitt, Mary Jane Wilan, and Melissa T. Stock.