Ripping Through You Kale Salad

As we are about to enter the eating season I am doing my best to reverse what usually happens to me at this time of year. I know that I can’t just give in to the sweets and carbs that seem to be everywhere during the holidays. My best defense is to just say no. I have said yes too often in the last two years.

Part of cutting out the types of foods that seem to stick to my bones means I have to up the flavor profile of healthy foods. So tonight I made a kale salad topped with salmon. The ingredients I added as bombs for the tastebuds were, tart apple slices, shaved fennel, almonds, red onion, lemon and Parmesan.

I started with some dark Dino Kale and massaged it with a bit of very green olive oil. I added the other ingredients and a lot of black pepper. I let it marinate for a bit while the kale softened from its treatment. Topped with a bit of pan roasted salmon made it an almost perfect dinner.

The quality that held it back from perfection was the tendency of the kale to get stuck between all of my teeth. It takes a lot of jaw action to break down kale. So after dinner I went right to flossing. I first used a floss pick and when I broke the notoriously strong bit of floss I turned to regular hand-held floss. Five minutes of dentist worthy flossing and I still had kale between a few molars. I brushed my teeth, first with my firm tooth brush and then with my soft. Back to hand flossing and I think I got it all.

I really didn’t want any of that kale to go to waste between my teeth because I wanted it to go to work ripping right through the rest of me. It was delicious and it was good for me. I am not saying it was as good as a piece of pecan pie, but it will do.