My son Alex and I had the wonderful opportunity to spend the summer with my best friend, Dr. Lena Palmer and her husband in lovely Oak Park, Illinois. During the three months or so we spent there, I fell in love with several new foods/products and gained way too many pounds to mention. I also made some lovely new friends and tested out some cool new recipes. One of the new gadgets that I don’t think I can return to Mexico without will be a food dehydrator, but I have a problem.
You can’t find kale anywhere in Guadalajara. I have tried. I have failed.
Lena introduced me to kale chips during my second week in Oak Park. They are a wonderful, tasty, delightfully flavorful way of getting in those important servings of leafy greens into your diet. I have a very long, scary family history of cancer, including colon cancer. I also know from experience and experimentation that it is down right hard to get in the recommended amount of vegetables (five to thirteen according to the Harvard School of Public Health). Kale chips can be eaten as a convenient snack or powdered down as an add in to soups, gravies, and sauces.
You just can’t find kale anywhere in Guadalajara. I know. I have tried!
Although I fell in love with the dehydrator itself, I can still make the chips IF I could find kale. Since I can’t find kale, I am going to have to resort to growing it myself. Thank goodness I have a year in the States to experiment. At least this way I can find out if it is worth the risk, trying to sneak in kale seeds next year upon our return to expat life in Mexico. In the meantime, I am currently conducting a review of dehydrators and preparing the case of WHY I need to buy a dehydrator so I can convince the husband, AKA the Politician, that I really need it. Since that might take a while, I think I’ll make a batch of kale chips to tide me over… 🙂
Expat Mexico 