Improvising

Someday, I hope to spend a couple of hours each weekend planning my menus, doing all my shopping, and preparing ahead most, if not all, of my meals for the week. What's been happening instead is that I spend the weekend catching up on sleep, doing laundry, playing the piano, squeezing in a too-short hike with the dog and husband, and starting but not finishing some house de-cluttering project. Come Monday morning, we're running low on just about everything, and I find myself scrounging to put together a breakfast with adequate protein (which is very hard to do when you can't eat eggs, are out of turkey sausage, and dislike the taste of your protein powder). By the end of the day, the situation has only gotten worse. I've been in meetings all day, skipped lunch, and since breakfast have only eaten an apple, a few pistachio nuts, and the raw cabbage I grabbed on my way out the door that morning. I'm starving, but also too tired to brave the post-work crowds at the grocery store. So, I head home and see what I can create from the scraps we have left in our cupboards and 'fridge.

Most nights like this I would opt for an old stand-by, like a bean quesadilla, using ingredients we almost always have in stock (commercial salsa, brown rice tortillas, and canned refried beans). But, I knew we had some kale that wasn't going to last much longer, and I was craving pasta (yep, that time of the month), so on a whim I decided to try making pesto with kale.

What I did:

1. Chopped up the kale, and steamed it just until it wilted.
2. Chopped 5 cloves of garlic.
3. Tossed the kale and garlic into a food processor and blended. It looked a little dry, so I added some olive oil and blended until it was the consistency of chunky pesto.
4. Cooked some rice noodles.
5. Stirred the "pesto" into the noodles, drizzled a bit more olive oil on top, added some hemp seed oil and Himalayan sea salt.

Voila! Kale pesto.

How was it? Next time I'll cut way back on the garlic. Then again, I'm a garlic lover, and the garlic was probably what made it taste so good. And there's the added bonus that garlic is a natural anti-fungal, which is good for my gut. So, all in all, I'd say it was an excellent improvisation that I'll make again.