… and other ‘super’ foods!

Winter is not such a busy time in the garden. It is,however, great for planning and reflecting and possibly getting on top of maintenance stuff—although I think we have not been so good at the latter.

But of course, in Winter we have the treats of the Winter harvest, and so, I can report that we have finally cracked the brassicas and have produced cauliflower, and broccoli and kale in a modest abundance*.

The hands-down best crop is the kale. I think we planted the Russian variety in both the soil and aquaponics gardens and all have thrived. The problem with Russian kale is that it is less substantial in leaf, and so my attempt to make kale chips was rather ordinary. The flavour was OK, the presentation OK, but the leaf gave itself over to be less chip-like, and more fairy-floss meets sad green dried veg thing—minus the sugar hit. 😦

Methinks those who promote the kale chip are probably using Tuscan kale or curly kale. Today we bought both as seedlings to plant.

But what of the current surfeit? I am loathed to just feed excess to the chickens, although I am reliably informed by my other half that the girls will turn this excess into eggs 🙂 so I opted to try a bit of dehydrating as our freezer has a finite capacity.

We don’t have a dedicated dehydrator (although we are now researching) and so the first couple of crops were processed via a 100˙C oven. Once dried, I employed our rather efficient coffee bean grinder to render all into a powder.

The result? A vibrant dark green dust that just screams vitality and vitamins!

We now have three little spice jars full of this goodness—ready to use in smoothies, or soups or sprinkled on God knows what 😛

If you have any ideas about how to use fresh kale (we still have truckload) or the dried stuff, let me know!

* I know that seems an oxymoron, but it works for me—an abundance in our modest backyard 🙂