Corn, My Hero... & More Kale Love

Today Henry woke up well-rested, happy, and cold-free.  Granted that doesn't necessarily mean that he'll be any less picky at meals, but it was a step up from yesterday. 

Lunch today, however, was a real pleasure.  I decided to try the chicken casserole on him again.  At first, as expected, he refused to eat it.  And then I had an idea.  I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but Henry LOVES corn.  In the summer he loved corn on the cob, and now he's just as happy to eat canned corn.  It couldn't get much easier.  So, I decided to offer Henry some corn.  Of course he immediately started saying, "corn, corn!".  So, I took the corn and poured it into his bowl of chicken casserole and mixed it in, while he watched (I wasn't trying to trick him).  The next thing I knew, he was taking the spoon himself and trying to scoop it all up.  He didn't finish the bowl, and still avoided the peas, but he did eat more than half of what I scooped out for him - it couldn't get much better...

And then it did!  Since I try to eat lunch with Henry to keep myself from just picking at his food, and to help him feel like part of a family meal, I took out some kale that I had made on Sunday.  I had given Henry the kale to try before, but he hadn't even touched it.  Today, however, when he saw me eating it, he wanted it.  I gave him a small kale leaf, and Henry licked it, and then put it out to hand back to me.  When I went to take it, he then went to lick it again.  I realized that he wanted me to break it up smaller because he couldn't chew it.  I started breaking it up, and I couldn't give it to him fast enough - he ate about 3 whole leaves!  What was even more impressive is that I had already put a clementine on his tray (a fave), and he opted for the kale instead! 

The kale recipe comes courtesy of Lisa Suriano, the creator of the Veggiecation program.  After she posted on twitter that some kids she had worked with loved the kale, I had to get the recipe.  Luckily, Lisa was very sweet and immediately emailed it to me.  I must warn you that I totally overloaded the baking sheet with kale (I was impatient!), and probably didn't let it crisp up enough, but it was delicious nonetheless!

Baked Kale Chips

Yield: 5 servings

Ingredients

12 large kale leaves

1 tbsp olive oil

3 Tbsp sugar

2 ½ tsp of cinnamon

Preparation

Preheat oven to 250°F.

Wash the Kale leaves and dry well.  Cut each leaf in half lengthwise.  Remove stem and center rib.

Toss kale with oil in large bowl.

Arrange leaves in single layer on 2 large baking sheets.

Combine Cinnamon and sugar in a bowl and sprinkle over Kale leaves.

Bake until crisp, about 25 - 30 minutes.  Check after 25 minutes.  Smaller leaves take less time and should be removed first.  The larger more wrinkled leaves usually need to bake for a few extra minutes to get crisp.

Transfer leaves to rack to cool.

Copyright Notice

© Copyright 2006-2010 Veggiecation. All World Wide Rights Reserved.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE WARNING: The entire contents, as well as all individual parts, of this program are copyrighted by its creator and author, Lisa Suriano (the “Author”), and are protected under the laws of the United States of America and member treaty nations.

Happy and (mostly) healthy eating!