Cucumber salad, kale chips, and stuffed chicken

We're running out of vegetables already. Maybe we eat more veggies than most people? I can see that we probably won't have an issue using up our allotment. Anyway, this one took care of the entire head of kale, which was kind of small, honestly, and one of the cucumbers and a radish or two.

Kale Chips

Not so much recipes, here, as a concept. Eh, that's how we cook these days, for the most part. Kale chips are easy and delicious, unless of course you can't stand the taste of kale. That's ok too, I'll take your kale. It definitely has a taste, kind of earthy, a little charred, a little bitter. I like it. Anyway, rip the leaves off the stems, and break them into bite-size pieces. Toss with some olive oil and kosher salt and bake at 300 degrees F for 15-30 minutes, tossing after 10 minutes to make sure the leaves are dehydrating evenly. Ed likes his crispy kale a little less crisp, I like mine crispy enough that it'll shatter when you eat it. 

You can experiment with other flavors; garlic salt comes to mind. We never get that fancy, and have been known to go through well over a pound of kale in a sitting. Can too much vitamin A make you sick? Quintessential white suburban millennials, here. 

Cucumber Radish Salad

The cucumber salad was another quick one. Since we're basically out of greens, I chopped the cucumber, chopped a few radishes, chopped some mint and some chives (from the garden), and tossed with a lemony vinaigrette. This would have been really good with more parsley, but we were out. I also cooked up some barley to fill it out, and mixed that in once it was cooked.

Everything else

The chicken was all Ed. He de-boned the chicken thigh, then rolled it up around a mixture of feta (still have some after the spanakopita!), oil-cured olives, sundried tomatoes, and chives, before trussing it up. Seared it in a mix of olive oil and butter in a cast iron pan, then into the oven to finish. It was delicious, tender and piquant. 

Some other meals, that used up all our green things - a giant salad on Saturday night, that used some of everything. Both heads of lettuce (they were small), a leaf of napa cabbage, a leaf or two of kale, radishes, parsley, chives, scallion, green garlic, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, soft-boiled eggs, and a maple/miso/lemon dressing. 

Sunday we brought a fairly unremarkable slaw over to our friends' house for dinner. It was good, but kind of just a mixture of what veggies we had left. All the napa, parsley, cilantro, chives, grated carrot, lemon juice, salt. A few sad tomatillos from the bottom of the fridge. Sumac sprinkled on top. That would have been better with some garlicky aioli, but we were out of eggs by that point, too. 

The spanakopita made about 4 servings for us, so I've been finishing that off for lunch. At this point all we have left are some carrots and radishes, plus a couple potatoes and a sunchoke that have been languishing in the fridge for too long, so tonight's dinner may be interesting, definitely going to be spelunking through the various condiments and pickles in the fridge. Tomorrow more veggies though!