Kale Smoothie

It felt like I all-of-a-sudden started hearing about kale all over the place. I honestly don’t remember what I was reading that made me feel surrounded by kale propaganda, but it influenced me enough that I stuck a bunch of pretty green kale in my bag when I was at the farmers market and felt mildly confident that I’d be able to use it… somehow.

Then I came home and since it was a warm January weekend in LA (I know you’re jealous), I decided to attempt a smoothie of some sort. I referenced two recipes- one from Joy the Baker and another from the then-recent issue of Real Simple. For reference, here are the different ingredient lists:

Joy the Baker Kale Spinach & Pear Smoothie

• 1 heaping cup spinach leaves
• 1 heaping cup chopped kale leaves
• 1/2 pear
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 1/2 cups cold almond milk (or soy milk or orange juice)
• 1 tablespoon honey

Real Simple Kale Apple Smoothie

• 3/4 cup chopped kale, ribs and thick stems removed
• 1 small stalk celery, chopped
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup apple juice
• 1/2 cup ice
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

So, if you couldn’t already tell, this is a RECIPE FAIL post. I created a new category for these types of posts because I figured it’d be fun and somewhat cathartic to lament my failures in the kitchen along with the successes.

Mistake #1: I bought the wrong kind of kale. In my absolute kale naivete, I would protest that I didn’t realize there were different kinds! Apparently I bought a variety called “black kale” that looks more like THIS than THIS. I honestly don’t know if they taste different, but I would say that the problems started with that.

Mistake #2: My close friends know that I’m very much a believer in “follow the directions” cooking and I stray far far far away from improvisation in the kitchen. This was one instance that I foolishly thought I could just throw things together in the blender by somehow combining the two recipes…. but… that was a bad idea. I should have followed the directions.

Mistake #3: Instead of using a frozen banana, I used a couple over-ripe bananas. I guess you can’t use over-ripe bananas in smoothies like you can in banana bread…

I think I ended up using the following ingredients:

• 1 heaping cup spinach leaves
• 1 heaping cup chopped kale leaves (ribs and thick stems removed)
• 2 bananas (over-ripe)
• 1 peeled/cut up apple
• 1/2 cup ice
• 1 tablespoon honey (plus a lot more after tasting it)

You can see that I really tried to combine the two recipes… I thought it’d be a fusion of sorts. I had some second thoughts as I was cutting and dumping ingredients, but I remained optimistic until I tried my first sip. I somehow convinced myself to drink an entire cup full of the stuff, but ended up throwing most of it away.

Recipe, fail.