But thanks (again) to my extremely health conscious friend, R, I’ve given it a second chance. R is often on a raw diet (by choice) and she encouraged me to try it raw in a salad “because it’s so extremely good for you”. I did, and what a difference from that limp, lifeless vegetable from my childhood! It’s sweet, a little spicy, crisp and delicious. And she’s right, it’s incredibly good for you.

What Is Kale?
It’s a type of cabbage from the Brassica oleracea family (which also includes a couple of my other favorites: broccoli and cauliflower) and it is loaded with healthy stuff. It has crazy amounts of Vitamin A, C and K, and lots of fiber, calcium, manganese, magnesium, carotenoids and flavonoids, etc. It is an anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and caner preventive food and it helps detoxify the body and lowers cholesterol.

That’s just too many good things to pass up, so these days, whenever I make a salad, I put half lettuce and half kale in it (I like to use the curly kind) and I also like to just snack on it raw with my spicy chickpea dip.

But my favorite way to eat it is as chips. They are quick and super easy to make and we often make a batch to snack on on weekend afternoons. Note: You’ll get a fair bit of kale stuck between your teeth, so it’s best eaten only with family and close friends!

Kale Chips Recipe

You need:
Kale (preferably organic, or even better, biodynamically grown – it’s on EWG’s list of fruit and veggies with the most pesticides)

Olive oil
Salt

You can use the curly kind for this, but I have found that they tend to cook a bit too unevenly for my taste. The curly parts will be crisp and yummy and the flat parts soft and sometimes even soggy. So I use any flat leaf kind (I used Lacinato for the chips in the photo).

1. Pre heat the oven to 350.

2. Rinse and remove the stems from the kale. Rip the leaves up into smaller pieces (whatever size you want them to be, mine are usually palm sized)

3. Very lightly grease a baking sheet with olive oil (go super light on the oil, the chips will get soggy and gross otherwise)

4. Put the kale on the baking sheet in one layer, no overlapping. Sprinkle with salt (any kind works, I usually use regular table salt, but sometimes Welsh sea salt)

5. Bake for 5-10 minutes. You’ll have to test this since all ovens vary. I have a suspicion that ours does not get as hot as it claims it is, so the ideal time for me is around 9 minutes. If you have an electric oven, check on them after 5 minutes. I have an old gas stove, and electric ovens always cook better and faster than mine.

When crispy but still green, they’re ready. Take them out, put on a plate and enjoy.

Related posts:

1. Broccoli Pita Pizza – A Simple Toaster Oven Recipe
2. Super Easy Chickpeas Recipe
3. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe

This makes roughly 2 cups (I think, we usually end up eating a lot of it right out of the mixing bowl…).

You need:

2 cans of chickpeas
½ cup olive oil
1 chopped or pressed garlic clove
2 tbsp dried cilantro
juice of ½-1 lemon
2 tbsp Cholula hot sauce
1 tsp salt
pepper

Rinse the chickpeas and put them and everything else in a food processor. Run until it looks good to you. If it’s too thick, add more olive oil and/or lemon juice (depending on your preferences).

Serve with cut veggies, I especially like it with carrots, celery, and broccoli. And it’s really good as a spread on sandwiches too. I’ve been putting it on my lunch sandwiches lately –  a nice layer of the chickpea spread (on Ezekiel sprouted bread) topped with homemade coleslaw mix (red and green cabbage and carrots). Sounds strange perhaps, but it’s really good, and incredibly good for you.

Related posts:

1. Chickpea Salad With Halloumi
2. Chickpea Burgers With Tzatziki And Hot Sauce
3. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe

If you want to keep it vegan, just omit the halloumi. I’ve actually forgotten to add it a couple of times, and it’s delicious without it too.

This is a really easy but very tasty chickpea salad recipe, perfect for hot summer evenings. For 4 people, you need:

• 2 cans of chickpeas (I use Eden Organics – no BPA)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large chopped, grated or pressed garlic clove
• 2 tbsp dried cilantro
• juice of ½ lemon
• Cholula (as much as you want, I probably use 2 tbsp)
• salt
• pepper

• lettuce (I use one package of prepared baby romaine)
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes

• halloumi

Rinse the chickpeas and put in a bowl. Add olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, cilantro, Cholula, salt and pepper and stir everything together. If you’re not eating right away, put a lid on it and put it in the fridge (you can do this a day or two ahead of time if you want – the chickpeas just get tastier and tastier when they sit in the dressing).

In another bowl, mix the lettuce with cherry tomatoes cut in half.

Heat a cast iron pan and slice the halloumi in thin slices, roughly ¼” wide. When the pan is hot, add the cheese (no fat needed) and fry until the side facing down is nice and brown. Turn the cheese slices and fry the other side. They get nice and crispy on the outside and have a wonderful salty flavor.

Put a mound of lettuce and tomatoes on each plate, add a generous spoonful of the chickpea mix, and top with a few pieces of cheese.

Also see my spicy chickpea dip recipe, based on this one.

Related posts:

1. Chickpea Burgers With Tzatziki And Hot Sauce
2. Tortilla Rollups – The Perfect Weeknight Dinner
3. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe

And, after my recent decision to seriously cut back on dairy (see the Drink Milk post), it comes in even handier. I’ve started making “ice cream” using coconut milk instead of cream, and it is delicious (if I may say so myself). Last night, we had company over, and I made this:

Raspberry Rum Coconut Ice Cream

You get 2 pints out of this recipe, and I store it in “real” containers I bought at a local ice cream shop.

1 12 oz bag frozen raspberries
1 can (14 oz) unsweetened full fat coconut milk
¾ cup sugar (I used organic turbinado)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons rum (I used Meyers spiced)

Puree the raspberries in a blender and strain out as many of the seeds as possible (I still had some left, but people liked it that way, so it worked out). Put the strained raspberries and all the other ingredients in the blender and puree until it’s well blended together (or if you’re lazy like I was here, just stir it together in the bowl). Pour into a bowl (I like to use stainless steel) and put the (covered) bowl in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (do NOT skip this step. I did once and ended up with runny ice cream all over the kitchen floor).

Once it’s chilled, start your ice cream maker machine, pour in the mixture and run for 25 minutes (in my case at least. The time may depend on which ice cream maker you have, I’m not sure).

When the time is up (and it looks creamy and delicious), stop the machine and put the ice cream into containers and freeze for a couple of hours. If you don’t put alcohol in it, you can eat it right away, but with alochol, I find it too runny at this point and like it to firm up a bit. And when you take it out to serve, there is no need to let it thaw, because the alcohol prevents it from freezing up really hard.

I’m happy to say this got rave rewiews last night. Some comments were:

“this tastes like something you would get in a really fancy restaurant”

“you made this?!?”

“it’s nice with the seeds, you can tell it is made with the real thing”

“it’s so fresh, not too sweet”

More ice cream (vegan and not) to follow…

Related posts:

1. Homemade Iced Coffee Using Espresso Coffee Beans
2. Chickpea Burgers With Tzatziki And Hot Sauce

To be honest, I’m actually more of a tea drinker. I love my gigantic morning mug of steaming hot tea so much that I sometimes look forward to it already when I go to bed at night! But these past few weeks have been so painfully hot and humid around here (I love heat, but even I need a break at this point) that a hot cup of anything is the last thing you want.

So I decided to try to make my own ice coffee instead. Luckily, a very nice person my husband works with had given him a big bag of really fancy espresso coffee beans a little while back, and a friend gave me a coffee grinder so we were all set to start experimenting.

I didn’t have any regular sugar – I don’t like sweets and hardly ever make anything that uses it but I do need something sweet in coffee. Luckily, I had some turbinado sugar left over from my homemade ice cream experiments last summer (more on that in future posts) and decided that would have to do. Actually I like that a lot better than plain old white sugar anyway since it adds a slight caramelly flavor.

So we brewed, we chilled, and loved the result. Those espresso beans are so good and the smell in the kitchen when you grind them – yum! It will definitely be our caffeinated drink of choice this summer.

Here’s my ice coffee recipe:

Grind the coffee beans (or use ground ones if you prefer). I use the basic manual drip method, so I boiled some filtered water and made my coffee as usual. I used 12 ½ tbsp ground coffee for about 10 cups (as measured on the coffee pot).

Take out a large glass bottle, I used an old Maple Syrup bottle, it fits quite a lot of coffee so it’s perfect (I always save nice glass bottles and jars, I have way too many already but I just can’t stand throwing them out, or put them in the recycling bin, I know I’ll be able to use them for something again – if not food, a craft project).

Put the sugar, whichever kind you’re using, into the empty bottle and pour a little bit of the hot coffee in. I probably used around 5 teaspoons of sugar for my large bottle, which fits around 6-7 cups of coffee (again, as indicated on the Melitta coffee pot). Shake the bottle about until the sugar has dissolved and pour in the rest of the coffee.

I then let the bottle sit on the kitchen table and cool off (with a piece of paper towel over since I don’t want fruit flies in it). Once it’s cooled a bit, put the cap on and put in the fridge overnight. If you’re desperate and can’t wait, you could shake it with ice and drink it sooner, but, being European, I don’t like ice in things, and I hate when my beverages get watered down, so I never do.

Once the coffee is nice and cold, pour a glass, add some milk if you want and enjoy!

I’ve tried making it with the addition of some Swedish vanilla sugar as well, but I didn’t like how that turned out. Plain and simple is best in my opinion. Although I was wondering how a little bit of rum extract would be… maybe I’ll try that some day.

Related posts:

1. Tortilla Rollups – The Perfect Weeknight Dinner
2. Broccoli Pita Pizza – A Simple Toaster Oven Recipe

In Sweden, we like to throw everything we can get our hands on on a piece of pizza dough (a slight exaggeration). While you certainly can get a Margherita and other traditional pizzas, some of the other common toppings make people from other countries do a double take. Here are some examples from the menu at my brother’s favorite pizza place (note: kebab in Sweden is the equivalent of Schwarma meat here):

“Love You” - tomato sauce, cheese, filet of pork, ham, mushrooms, bacon, shrimp, béarnaise sauce

“Kebabpizza” - Tomato sauce, cheese, schwarma meat, iceberg lettuce, onion, tomatoes, cucumber, pepperoncini, kebab sauce (a yogurt-based spicy sauce)

“Castello” – Pineapple, mushrooms, onion, peppers, pepperoncini, salami, gorgonzola, camembert, feta cheese

“Mexico Special” - Tomato sauce, cheese, ground beef, bacon, garlic, egg, onion, jalapeno, taco spices

I’ve had the Kebabpizza and it is awesome – the sauce is to die for!

And now, on to the banana curry pizza. You might recoil in horror when you first see this recipe, but if you like curry and the mix of sweet and salt, give it a shot. It’s wildly popular in Sweden (you’ll find it under “Ordinary or Classic Pizzas” on the menus), and even my American husband liked it once he mustered up the courage to try it.

This pizza is traditionally made with smoked ham, and if you want to try it with that, buy it thinly sliced at the deli (the Black Forest ham they sell at Whole Foods is one that is very close in flavor to what they use in Sweden) and then cut it into small squares.

Since we prefer to not eat meat, we make it without, but you really do need that smoky flavor to make it taste just like it does in Sweden, and I have found that smoked cheese is a great substitute. Any smoked cheese will do, I get whatever I happen to find at the store that day.

You’ll need

• 2 individual-sized pizza doughs (make it yourself or buy it readymade – we like Iggy’s readymade)
• Pizza sauce (we use Enrico’s organic pizza sauce available at Whole Foods)
• 2 ripe bananas
• Curry powder
• Smoked cheese, grated
• Other cheese, grated (anything you want, we usually use a mozarella/cheddar mix)

Put your pizza dough on a baking sheet. Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce all over the dough.

Cut the bananas in thin slices and distribute evenly over the pizza. Sprinkle them with curry powder, as much as you like (I use a lot).

Cover with grated cheese, keep the proportions around 20% smoked cheese and 80% other. If you use too much smoked cheese, the flavor gets too overpowering.

Place the pizzas in the oven and bake according to the directions for the dough you are using.

Traditional Swedish version: Include the ham and omit the smoked cheese
Vegetarian version: Omit the ham.
Vegan version: Omit the ham and use a vegan cheese (I have to admit I have never tried making pizza with anything but “real” cheese, so I don’t’ know how that will come out).

Enjoy!

PS. How do you make tomato sauce look appetizing in photos?

Related posts:

1. Broccoli Pita Pizza – A Simple Toaster Oven Recipe
2. Tortilla Rollups – The Perfect Weeknight Dinner
3. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe

Traditional Valborg menus often include salmon, roe, potatoes in some form, and a hot beverage (it’s usually freezing still this time of year in Sweden and after spending hours outside looking at that fire, you need something warm). Now, I don’t like any of those dishes (except for the hot beverage), so I am going to make my take on falafel – chickpea burgers – instead.

I have loved falafel ever since I bought my first one at a little hole-in-the-wall place in Aix-en-Provence about 20 years ago. The crunchiness, the creaminess, the garlic… yum! What I don’t love, however, is the intense heartburn I get from the deep fried ones, so I decided to try to invent a more digestion-friendly version.

After a few trial and errors, I came up with this super-easy recipe. I think they are delicious, and if you don’t like tzatziki, or prefer a vegan diet, you can eat them with any condiment of your choice. My husband can’t stand yogurt, so he puts Dijon mustard and ketchup on his.

Just a note up front: you will need a food processor for this (there may be a way to make them without one, but I don’t know what that would be). I bought my first one a few years ago, and I love it! How did I manage for so many years without one?

This recipe makes around 10 burgers, and we usually eat 3-4 each, so I guess it’s enough for 3 people, or 2 with leftovers for lunch. For a larger crowd, I would make this same amount in batches and transfer to a bigger bowl before shaping the burgers. One batch is pretty much all my (14-cup) food processor has room for.

For 10 burgers, you will need:
½ cup of uncooked bulgur
1 cup of water
1 tsp salt

1 can of chickpeas (we use Eden Organics – no BPA)
1 medium-sized yellow onion (if it’s too big, the burgers get too loose and watery)
4 cloves of garlic
¼ – ½ cup of panko bread crumbs
1 tbs olive oil (+ more for the cookie sheet and brushing)
1 ½ tbs white wine vinegar
½ tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tbs dried cilantro (use fresh if you don’t’ like dried)
salt (lots!)

For the Tzatziki:
1 (7 oz) container of Fage 2% Greek yogurt (you can use full fat if you want)
½ seedless (a.k.a. European or English) cucumber
1 garlic clove
salt

Other stuff for assembling the burgers:
Pita bread (we use whole wheat)
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Hot sauce (we love Cholula)

1. Start with the tzatziki. Grate the cucumber on the largest side of your grater, put it in a bowl, salt liberally and cover it. Let sit in room temperature for about 30 minutes. This is to draw some of the water out of the cucumber so that the Tzatziki doesn’t get too wet.

2. Next up is the bulgur. Bring the water to a boil, stir in the salt and bulgur, cover and remove from heat. Let sit for at least 25 minutes.

3. Once the cucumber has sat for 30 min, drain off as much of the water as you can (I sometimes squeeze it in a paper towel). Stir in the entire container of yogurt (or less if you want it more on the “cucumbery” side), press in the garlic clove and salt to taste. Stir again, cover and put in the fridge for now.

4. Time to throw everything in the food processor! Cut up the onion in smaller pieces (I like to put the onion on the bottom to make sure no large pieces end up in the burgers), rinse and add the chickpeas, grate or press in the garlic cloves, add the bulgur, all the spices, oil and vinegar, salt (I probably put in a tablespoon of salt in these, they need lots of it) and last but not least, the breadcrumbs. Start with ¼ of a cup and add more if needed. Run the food processor until everything is nicely blended. If it looks very runny, add some more breadcrumbs. It should be moist and somewhat loose, but not runny.

5. Let sit for 15 minutes.

6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Oil a cookie sheet lightly. Scoop up a heaping tablespoon (regular, not one for measuring) of the mixture and form it into a burger. Mine are roughly ½” thick and 3″ in diameter (I like lots of crunchy surface). Place on the cookie sheet. Continue until you’re out of mixture. Brush each with some olive oil.

7. Bake in the middle of oven for a total of 40 minutes, turning them once after 20 minutes. I shuffle them around on the cookie sheet too when I’m turning them, since my oven bakes a bit unevenly.

8. While they’re baking after you turned them, prepare the other stuff. Separate the lettuce leaves and rinse them. I leave them whole, but if you want them shredded, prepare them that way. Slice the tomato into thin slices. Take the tzatziki out of the fridge and open the hot sauce.

9. Once the burgers are ready, take them out of the oven and assemble the sandwiches. Tear a pita bread in half, put in a leaf of lettuce, a few slices of tomato, then one (or two) burgers. Top that with a generous serving of the tzatziki and as much as you want of the hot sauce. Make sure you have lots of napkins or paper towels close by and start eating!

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do, and if you try this recipe, I would love to hear what you thought.

For more chickpea recipes, also see my Chickpea salad and Chickpea dip posts.

Related posts:

1. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe
2. Broccoli Pita Pizza – A Simple Toaster Oven Recipe
3. Mexican-Inspired Brunch Quiche

I made this Mexican-inspired quiche to bring to a Mother’s Day brunch at my sister-in-law’s house a couple of years ago. It was a huge hit, and I was just asked to bring it again for Easter, so I thought I’d share the recipe when it’s fresh in my mind. I’m not very good at measuring and writing down what I do, I usually cook “on a hip” as we say in Sweden. I guess that can be roughly translated as on a whim, meaning you don’t measure anything, just eyeball and throw in whatever you feel like. Probably the reason I’m a lousy baker.

You will need:

• 1 prepared 9″ pie crust
• 3 roasted red peppers (from a jar or roast them yourself if you have the time)
• ½ cup of thawed frozen corn
• ½ cup of chopped green onions
• ½ cup of salsa (I use Amy’s medium)
• ½ cup whole milk
• 3 large or 4 medium eggs
• 1 cup of shredded cheese (I use Whole Food’s Fiesta blend)
• salt & pepper

Heat the oven to 375. Cut the peppers in bite sized pieces and slice the green onions as thin as you can. Whisk the eggs, half&half, salt and pepper together in a bowl.

Place the pie crust on a baking sheet covered with foil (mine always bubble over). Put half the cheese on the bottom of the crust, add the corn, peppers, green onions and salsa. Pour in the eggs and cover with the rest of the cheese. Bake for about 45 minutes (this varies slightly from oven to oven). Enjoy!

PS. If you want to make this more filling, you can add some black beans with the corn and peppers.

Related posts:

1. Tortilla Rollups – The Perfect Weeknight Dinner
2. Broccoli Pita Pizza – A Simple Toaster Oven Recipe
3. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe

Broccoli
I love broccoli. I eat it in some form almost every day, even if it’s just raw with a nice sharp piece of cheese as a snack after work to hold me over until dinner. Lucky for me it’s one of the healthiest foods around: one stalk of broccoli gives you 220% of your daily recommended intake of Vitamin C; it is full of vitamins and minerals; it’s high in fiber, low in fat and calories; and high in calcium and potassium which help with cardiac and skeletal muscle function. AND, some researchers believe that a cup of broccoli a day is enough to help ward off certain breast tumors.

Sambal Oelek
Sambal Oelek is an Indonesian chili paste, very spicy and absolutely delicious (I wrote about it in more detail in my Pasta with Carrot Sauce post). If you don’t like hot food, certainly omit that from the recipe. If you want to try it and live in the Boston area, you can find it at Christina’s Spice Shop in Inman Square (1255 Cambridge Street, Cambridge).

You’ll need (for 1 person)
1 pita bread (any size you want)
Pasta or pizza sauce
Broccoli
Black pepper
Cheese (whichever kind you like, I use low fat cheddar)
Sambal Oelek (optional)
Non-stick aluminum foil for baking sheet

1. Start by cutting up broccoli in smaller pieces. The size is not very important; I like pretty big pieces, but you can just sprinkle on a little bit of the florets if you like.

2. Place your pita bread on a baking sheet lined with foil (I always use non-stick). Spread pasta or pizza sauce on the bread, as much or as little as you like. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper. Add the broccoli in an even layer and place the pizza in the toaster oven (middle rack). Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes (times might vary slightly from oven to oven).

3. When the 10 minutes are up, take the baking sheet out of the oven, add the cheese (grated or sliced, as much or as little as you want) and put it back in the oven.

4. Broil until cheese is melted and is starting to change color.

5. Take it out, put on a plate and enjoy! I like to eat it with a tiny bit of Sambal Oelek with each bite, but if you don’t like your food hot, skip that.

Vegan version: Replace the cheese with vegan cheese.

Related posts:

1. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe
2. Tortilla Rollups – The Perfect Weeknight Dinner

Beans provide low-fat protein, fiber, vitamin B, potassium, magnesium, folate, iron and phytonutrients. As I mentioned in my Carrot sauce recipe, we use canned beans from Eden Organics, because they claim that their cans do not contain BPA. It would probably be even healthier to cook dried beans, but we don’t.

The tomato (and salsa) bring lycopene (a powerful antioxidant), fiber, potassium, vitamin B and C, lutein, and other good stuff.

Avocados contain cholesterol-lowering oleic acid, vitamin B6, C and K, potassium, folate, and fiber.

As for the Tortillas, we love the Ezekiel 4:9 by Food for Life (we get ours at Whole Foods). They are flourless, organic, and contain only sprouted whole grains (and some water and sea salt) which create a complete protein (they also contain 18 amino acids). They are super delicious with a nutty flavor and when they crisp up, they’re even yummier.

You will need (for 2 people)
2 Tortillas
1 can of black beans (or any other bean you like)
1 tomato
Salsa (I like to use Amy’s Spicy Chipotle)
1-2 Avocados
½ Lime
Salt to taste
Cheese (any kind you want, we like Monterey Jack)

1. Rinse the beans and put them in a pot on low heat, just to warm them a little bit. Turn the heat off once they seems warm enough, if you leave them on for too long they’ll burn and get mushy.

2. Cut the tomato in smaller pieces and the avocado in slices. Squeeze a little bit of lime over the cut avocado and sprinkle with salt. Open the salsa and put all these ingredients in a little assembly line.

3. Heat a cast iron skillet until it’s scorching hot and place your first tortilla in it (we use them straight from the freezer, not thawed). Add the cheese immediately. Leave over high heat until cheese is starting to melt. You don’t want to leave it in for too long though, because the tortilla will get too crispy to fold.

4. Put the tortilla on a plate, add some warm beans and take it over to the assembly line where you put in whatever and as much as you want of the prepared ingredients. Roll up and enjoy.

This dish tends to be quite messy, and we usually put a piece of aluminum foil around the base of the folded tortilla to avoid the worst accidents.

Vegan version: Omit the cheese, or replace with a vegan kind. Or make an avocado spread: since I stopped eating dairy, I have been putting this on instead of cheese: mash together 1 avocado, the juice of 1/2 lemon, one pressed garlic clove, a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper and spread on the tortilla as soon as it comes out of the pan.

Related posts:

1. Pasta With Carrot Sauce – An Inexpensive And Easy Recipe