False Advertising

A few months ago, I saw a blog post with the title, "Want to eat a BIG bowl of cookie dough?" 

Duh. The only point of making cookies is to eat the dough before you bake it. Well . . . maybe not the only point. Anyway, I couldn't wait to make this recipe. Sadly, no nutritional information was provided. When I put it in the recipe calculator at My Fitness Pal, I was dismayed to see that the calories for the entire bowl were just over 1300. OK, so I wouldn't eat the whole bowl. I could share it with three friends.  That's still over 300 calories per serving, and that's a lot more than most of my snacks or desserts. It's worth trying again, with a  rework of the recipe, because I thought it was pretty good. Sarah hated it, but Lauren and a bunch of her friends wolfed it down. But I felt misled. One fourth of that recipe does not qualify as a "BIG bowl."

Last week at our co-op, the cooking class made baked vegetable chips. The baked kale was amazing. Crunchy, mildly salty, interesting (not strong) flavor. The kids hated it. I couldn't get enough. We had a potluck at church Saturday, so I decided to make them myself.

I ripped the stems out of one bunch of kale and ripped them into bite sized pieces. Then I spread them on two rimmed baking sheets and poured a Tablespoon of oil on each sheet and sprinkled with kosher salt. I baked at 350 for about 15 minutes. You want to make sure they don't burn, but dry out and get crispy.

There were some minor complaints about the smell, no one else in the family liked them, and there was some doubt as to how they would be received at the potluck. "If no one else likes them, then more for me!"

Not everyone did like them. They weren't the runaway hit I'd hoped for; almost half of what I took came back home with me. I'll admit, something that looks odd and isn't your typical saucy potluck offering is a hard sell sometimes. But I'll definitely be making this again. I'll probably spray with cooking spray instead of the olive oil, because the salt didn't stick well, and that much oil just wasn't necessary.

Oh--the calories? 365 (which will be less next time when I use less oil) for an enormous amount, easily as much as a big bag of chips. Did I mention that the kale only cost 69 cents? Now that's a good deal.