it was the best of kale, it was the worst of kale ...

On Wednesday and Thursday I had two very different experiences cooking with kale.  Let's begin shall we ...

Wednesday, p90x day 45
After working out back, biceps, and abs we were half way done with the program.  Once we were done, it was time to have our usual post work out protein shakes.  Instead of using fresh spinach like we usually do, I decided to use fresh kale.

• 1 spoonful creamy peanut butter
• 1 scoop vanilla protein powder
• 1 banana
• 3 or 4 kale leaves ripped into smaller pieces
• water
• and unfortunately no ice since our ice maker is currently broken

All of the ingredients went into the blender ...

They were terrible.  I'm not really sure what eating fresh cut grass tastes like, but I'm fairly certain it tastes very similar to kale protein shakes.  We chugged them down (somehow) and headed to Tijuana Flats for some dinner.  I think I'll stick to using fresh spinach since somehow that flavor is always masked by the peanut butter and banana.

Thursday, p90x day 46

Today was supposed to be yoga day.  Although I usually enjoy the 90 minutes of stretching and balancing I decided to run for 60 minutes on the treadmill instead.

• 1 minute warm up 4.0
• 1 minute at 5.0
• 6.0-6.8 for 55 minutes
• 4.0 for 3 minutes
• total miles 6.17 (almost a 10k) and 734 calories

I decided to keep dinner simple and made brown rice, grilled chicken, a mushroom and tomato salad, and ... kale chips!  Using the recipe from Ashley's blog I was able to make delicious, crispy chips that are very healthy for you.
Basic Krispy Kale Chips

-Courtesy of Edible Perspective

• kale
• salt and pepper
• extra virgin olive oil

Directions: Preheat the oven to 350F. Take several kale leaves, wash, and rip off the leaves and place on baking sheet. Toss the stems. Rip into small pieces about 3 inches in length. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over top and then sprinkle salt and ground black pepper over top. Bake for 10-15 minutes and then remove from the oven and flip, and then bake for another 10-15 minutes until very crispy.

Ryan and I really liked how the chips tasted and will definitely be making them again (especially since we have so much left in the crisper of our refrigerator).