Kale Salad

Who knew kale was edible? When I was in high school, my first "real" job was at MCL Cafeteria. I was the salad girl. I would set up the salad bar in the mornings, scoop all kinds of assorted salads for the customers, and keep all my salad bowls full and the bar looking nice. One of the ways we kept the salad bar nice looking was to fill all the empty spaces between the bowls with kale. It was dark green, curly, and hard. As far as I was concerned, it was purely "ornamental", a garnish for the salad bar.

Oh how things have changed! I recently discovered that there are actually different kinds of kale. I found a recipe last year for a kale salad and I've been hooked on it since. This has become one of my favorite salads. The recipe calls for Tuscan kale. It's also called dinosaur kale or lacinato kale. I found my lacinato kale at Meijer. For some reason, there are days when none of the grocery stores have this kind of kale so I grab it when I can. I always see the other kind of kale but I don't think it's tender like the lacinato.

So here's the recipe...

KALE SALAD

1 bunch of lacinato kale

1/2 cup olive oil

1 lemon

3 cloves garlic

red pepper flakes

Parmesan cheese (I used Asiago because the wedges are on sale this week)

lacinato kale

Remove the ribs from the kale and cut it up into bit size ribbons.

dressing ingredients

Measure olive oil in a measuring cup. Squeeze in the juice of one lemon. Mince garlic cloves and add. Add red pepper flakes to taste. Mix everything together and pour over your chopped kale.

Let all the flavors meld for about 30 minutes then shred your cheese on top and dig in!

I believe the original recipe also called for breadcrumbs but I eat mine with bread on the side and use the bread to sop up the olive oil dressing and any extra cheese shreds that are left behind.

On the running front, I decided to do a nice easy run this morning to just get my legs loosened up. I also think I need to get better acclimated to this warmer weather. I actually got my butt outside before 9 am and had an enjoyable 3 mile run. I think I'm going to do more easy runs this week rather than try to cross-train to up my mileage and see if that makes me feel any better on my harder runs.