Kale Dilemma

I need to take a green vegetable for Thanksgiving, and I don’t feel like taking beans. The farm market I went to was out of Brussels sprouts so I settled for kale. I bought the two largest bags of kale that they had since it cooks down, but a little voice in the back of my mind was saying, “Don’t take kale.” I don’t even know if my family knows what kale is, but I really doubt they ever eat it. That means, if I don’t turn out the best kale on the planet, they’ll never try it again. Plus, I’m not going to drive kale 500 miles if only the four of us are going to eat it.Today I was at Common Market and organic Brussels sprouts were on sale from $7.99 per pound to $4.99 per pound and they had a lot of the tiny ones, which are the best, especially for people who don’t eat them very often – like my relatives. That predicament resolved, I needed to come up with something to do with all this kale I already bought!

I had a pound of ground pork in the freezer; I can’t remember what I had in mind when I bought it or if it’s in there for an emergency. When you buy your meat from a farm, sometimes you need meat and it is not convenient, or even possible, to access the farm — so keep a bit in the freezer. I was thinking of using the pork in stuffed acorn squash but decided that, with rice and some other good stuff, there wouldn’t be any room left in the squash for meat. So tonight is kale and ground pork.  Here I’m showing how much kale I had, use whatever amount you have, and you don’t need a full pound of meat either.

Kale and Ground Pork
1 T avocado oil
1/4 C chopped onions
1 lb ground pork
1 t paprika
1 crushed clove garlic
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 t sesame oil
2 C broth
1 large bunch of kale leaves, cut in pieces
A dash of ground pepper and sea salt
In a large wok, heat the oil. Add the onion, ground pork, and paprika and cook until all the pink is gone from the meat. Add the garlic, vinegar, and sesame oil and stir.

Add vegetable broth and kale. Bring to a boil, stir, and then simmer until the kale reaches the tenderness you like (3-10 minutes), stirring occasionally while the broth reduces.  Serve in a bowl with a bit of broth and garnish with paprika.