After a I teach Nia I am sweaty and going from a somewhat warm studio to the cold when you are wet is not fun. After Nia class yesterday I was so cold I just wanted to go straight home, but I had one stop to make in Willow Glen. But after that I had planned on jumping on the freeway and going straight home. Sometimes getting off the freeway at our exit is difficult. The most direct route requires one to go from the exit ramp across three to four lanes of a sometimes busy street. Most of the time I can safely move across to the turn lane, but every once in a while it is too trafficky and I don’t believe I should stop the people behind me on the ramp NOR the people driving on the street I am going to cross just because I want to make a left hand turn. I don’t believe in endangering others to make it easier on myself. So sometimes I just stay in the most right lane and drive through the light instead of turning left. Then I take a round about way home. But I get there just the same and I don’t stress other drivers or myself. Well, this happened yesterday when I was freezing and just wanted to get home. As I was deciding on my round about way home I realized I might as well just go to the grocery store since I was on that road already. We could always use fresh veggies so I decided to get some.
While I was in the store a woman started talking to me about eggplant. She said it was too difficult to cook so when her neighbors gives it to her she just throws it away. For on brief moment I considered asking her if I could give her my phone number and she could call me and I would take it! Then we started talking about some of the other vegetables that were in the same area. She was saying collard greens are good for you. I told her that my husband loves them. She asked me how I cooked them and I told her I sautéed them. She said she fried them, the same as the eggplant. While we were talking I noticed the Kale. I always forget about kale. I was happy that we were talking and it allowed me to focus for a moment on the kale. I bought some.
Kale is part of the cabbage family. It is just leaves. Kale is part of the family of vegetables that are called cruciferous vegetables. Some other cruciferous vegetables are broccoli, collard greens, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower.
You know how I don’t understand plant species and families and all that. But more and more research is providing information that these types of vegetables are very good for us in regards to nutrients we need.
As much as we all know to take the governmental daily values with a grain of salt, a cup of kale has over 1300% of the daily value of vitamin K, over 350% of vitamin A, and over 80% of vitamin C. It also contains calcium and beta carotene. Research has shown that kale is rich in antioxidant, is an anti-inflammatory, and has properties that are thought to be of the anti-cancer nature. Steamed kale is thought to have cholesterol-lowering benefits.
According to Wiki: Kale freezes well and actually tastes sweeter and more flavourful after being exposed to a frost. I, myself, am going to try to make the oh-so-talked-about-you-have-probably-heard-about-them kale chips. In fact I could swear that one of you — one of you that I read your blog — posted about kale chips, but I can’t remember who. I went looking but I couldn’t find the post.
Anyway . . . do you eat kale? If you do how do you eat it? I am going to go experiment right now!
Terre Pruitt's Blog 