Kale Chips: Epic Fail

I am greens-phobic. Not the salad kind of greens; it's those sturdy, bitter, winter greens that give me the willies. In fact, I've never cooked them, because just looking at those woody stems and ginormous leaves makes me nervous.

But I've seen several recipes this winter for Kale Chips. As in, torn leaves of kale, baked and salted, transformed into crackly and crunchy morsels not completely unlike REAL chips.

A veggie that resembles junk food? Inconceivable!

And there are even actual pictures on the Internet from food bloggers, showing small children devouring these crispy green bits of goodness. Now if kids in Pull-Ups can pony up and eat kale, I certainly can, right?

I decided to put on my big-girl underpants and not fear the kale. I actually made it to the register without returning my leafy bundle to the veggie aisle. I brought it home. I washed it. I spun it dry--because every recipe I've seen is quite *stern* about the fact that the kale must be bone dry or else it won't turn out.



I followed the basic method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Drizzle the kale with one tablespoon of olive oil and toss well to coat. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet, spacing the leaves out so they don't touch. Sprinkle kale with 1 teaspoon seasoned salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Pop the kale into the oven and roast for 7 to 15 minutes, watching VERY carefully. The recipes I read were also very *stern* in their warnings not to let the kale brown, which it will do any time between minute 7 and minute 15, depending on how hot your oven runs. Who are these Stalins of Kale? They are very bossy.

But, if the kale browns, it becomes bitter, so you really have to babysit this sucker starting at minute 7. When brittle and crackly but NOT brown, remove from oven, plate and eat.

Verdict: What the Hell is this recipe about? I was a good little rule follower, down to the letter. My kale was dry and it was not brown and it was--Garrrgggllllll! Nasty! Despite my diligence, the kale chips still tasted kind of bitter and, frankly, like crispy grass.

None of us liked it. Well, Miss M. can't say for certain because she took one look at those things and said, "I not eating that."

Sorry Kale. I guess for us, it just wasn't meant to be.

One Night in Athens

So after a black and tan (okay, a couple) we lurched back to the Grande Bretagnge for a much needed little nap. I konked out for 2 1/2 hours and when I woke, I told hubby "Good Morning! It looks like it's going to be another beautiful day in Athens."

He said, "You haven't even had dinner yet, dummy." Oh.

We were (okay, I was) still kind of out of it, but luckily we had--according to the Best of 2009 issue of...some random magazine I read a few months ago--the best night time view of the acropolis in our very own hotel. On the roof even!

So we cleaned the stink off us and headed up to the GB Roof Garden. We watched the sun set, drank kir royales (15 euros a pop, cough) and were lucky enough to see this

I was so in love with the view that I couldn't be bothered to eat dinner elsewhere.

"If we eat here, it's gonna be a huge-ass bill," SOMEONE reminded me.

AHEM, excuse me, someone has had no sleep and hardly any food in the past 24 hours and has been walking for HOURS and who are you you cruel bastard who wants me to walk some more, when I feel like shit? Even though everything is my freaking fault, which is totally not the point.

I won. Dude knows not to mess with a feral beast.

Dinner was delicious: local fish and amazing bread and tomatoes like you never knew. And a really nice bottle of wine, which we hastily polished off.

Suddenly, I FELT TERRIFIC!

And guess what? All the waiters in Greece are cuties! And so helpful! Amazingly, they all have cousins who own tavernas that we need to visit tomorrow! And one of them has a cousin who plays in band who we must go see...now!

Yeah, I don't know why he married me, either.

But he paid our huge-ass bill and took me to see Rembetika and we got in for free with the royal treatment because our waiter at the GB, Evangelos, did indeed have a cousin playing and had called ahead to alert them.

Rembetika, as Evangelos (and my husband, who annoyingly knows everything about music) explained, is the music that the "real" people listen to--you know, the ones who don't like pop. Rembetika, they explained, is the music of the urban poor, the disenfranchised. They sing about drinking and drugs and anger and past injustices.

Yeah! My kinda attitude! My kinda music! I almost shook my fist in the air on the cab ride to the club. I pictured some Greek Kurt Cobain kinda dude, wailing into a microphone.

What I got was a tavern full of older people/families and a band that included an accordion, a violin and a tambourine. But they kinda rocked it, they did. The audience knew the songs by heart and sang and danced in the aisles and the singers belted the melodies out with feeling. And after a glass or two of the house wine--the wine of the Immortal, they said--I was tapping my foot right along with them.

The bar, should you ever find yourself in Athens in need of some Rembetika, tasty snacks and happy people, is called Stoa Athanaton. Music doesn't START until midnight, so I suggest you hustle up to the rooftop of the GB for 15$ kir royales and the most gorgeous Acropolis sunset you will ever see. But that wine of the Immortal? Ouch. Maybe not.

Wrong-Ass Food

When I was in the third grade, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and given a 2% chance of survival. As you can imagine, she was in the hospital for some time. My dad travelled extensively for business and so my sister and I were basically at the mercy of hordes of visiting relatives. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, second cousins--you name it--everybody got a turn.

It was a pretty rotten time, and I hardly remember anything about that year, actually. But I do remember the week when my Wild Uncle Johnny was in charge of us. Uncle Johnny (my mom's older brother) was a glamorous dude. He was a world traveller, linguist, art collector, genius and unabashed gourmand.

The week he took care of us, Uncle Johnny had just come off a trip to Europe, and he declared it "International Food Week" at our house. Every day my sister and I hustled home from school, anxious to see God-Knows-What Uncle Johnny was whipping up in the kitchen. We did our homework at the kitchen table, watching him saute, braise and fricassee and in turn, he regaled us with stories of the exotic lands he'd seen. It was way better than the Travel Channel, believe me. He also introduced us to some pretty interesting food.

Under his tutelage, we tried vichyssoise (cold potato leek soup...delicious, by the way), steak tartare (my sister barfed for hours after that meal), real Texas tamales, oysters Rockefeller and spaghetti carbonara, to name a few. That blue-eyed rascal mesmerized us, that's all I can figure, because getting a third grader to happily sample cold soup and raw beef and shellfish with spinach on it is no easy task.

On the third day of his visit, I opened the refrigerator and almost peed myself. There, on the top shelf of the refrigerator, loomed a gigantic glass jar of--what the Hell was that floating in the jar, anyways?

"Pickled pig's feet," he replied nonchalantly, reaching into the refrigerator for a beer. "Absolutely delicious, mark my words. You'll love it."

The rest of the afternoon, I kept sneaking back into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door and gawking at that enormous jar. I was so small I had to crane my neck back to even see it properly and even then, I couldn't believe what I was looking at. Pig feet. Cut off. Floating in brine. It was then I realized: there is some wrong-ass food in the world.

I can't remember if I tried the pickled pig's feet. My guess is probably not. I can't ask Wild Uncle Johnny about it because he died last year. And now that I'm older and have seen more of the world (and the supermarket), I realize that just about every country has some item of wrong-ass food in it.

Haggis. Admit it, that is wrong-ass food, you Scottish freaks. Lutefisk. Hello? Norwegians? Don't you know that lye kills people? And you're soaking your fish in it? Head cheese. You Brits are crazy motherf*#kers, you know that, right?

And don't get me started on Asia. Asia is an entire Continent of wrong-ass food. Asians put stuff in their mouths that I wouldn't look at in a zoo. Balut (duck fetus, boiled, served in the shell). Sea slugs. Bull Penis. Fried spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, you name it.

Even places famous for their good food have wrong-ass food. France? Sweetbreads and calf brains. Italy? Cibreo (cock's combs...you know, that spongy wattle-y stuff on a rooster? Yeah, that.) Spain? Bull testicles.

Wrong-ass food is on my mind today because hubby and I leave for Greece in a few days. I am beyond excited to see, smell, touch and taste a place I thought I'd only ever see in my dreams. I am also compulsive as Hell because I've read three guidebooks and I still don't think I know enough. But I do know enough to have written on the inside cover of each guidebook: Dana, whatever you do, do NOT eat patsa or podi.

Patsa, that clever dog of a dish, sounds a hella lotta like pas-ta but it ain't, I tell ya. What menudo is to Mexico, Patsa is to Greece. And I don't care how quickly it's supposed to cure a hangover--I am not eating lamb innard soup.

I'm almost tempted to order Podi just for shits and grins. In Greek, the word podi means "foot." And what you get, if the guidebooks can be trusted, is a glutinous bowl of soup with a cow's foot floating in it. Now that is a tempting photo opportunity. Still, I think I will pass. Podi's got wrong-ass written all over it.

And if you think I've forgotten the good old U.S.A., you are wrong. I am an Equal Opportunity Crap-Slinger. Yes, my darling America, you too have plenty of wrong-ass food. Shall we start with, oh, I don't know......meat loaf?

***A Note to Uncle Johnny: Okay, you know I'm an agnostic and so you probably, if I think about it, can NOT hear this or see this right now, but here goes. You know that week you were here? That was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. All that cooking and CRAZY food and those nutty stories that probably had an ounce of truth in them? They swept me away. And now that I'm an adult, I understand exactly what you were doing. Thank.You.