Saturday Salad: Kale and Friends

We had a great time today with some friends at the Fall Festival in our town.  We let the kids play on the playground and took turns going into town for vittles and to visit A Taste of Olive.  My friends came back to our picnic table with two delicious salads, one was a sweet potato salad and the other was a kale salad.  Even though I didn't have a fork (it wasn't supposed to be my salad!) I stole some of it with my plastic knife and almost fell off the bench.

This is my version, recipe below!

Kale salad (the kale was raw) was amazing! It had what looked like couscous mixed in (though was supposed to be quinoa, I didn't think it was).  Kale, grains, sliced almonds and dried cranberries with what I guessed was a citrus (fresh lemon juice) and olive oil dressing.

When we got home, I was like, I AM MAKING THAT SALAD.  I foraged the fridge and I had day-old brown rice leftover from Chinese food (the medium box, not the huge box), and I knew I definitely had dried cranberries and sliced almonds.  My husband saw me foraging around and he asked what I was making. I said, "That kale salad! But I don't have any kale."  And he was like, "Yes, you do."  And, lo and behold, I had JUST bought fresh, organic kale only two days ago (to make more kale chips, or so I thought).  YES.

Here's the recipe, it is very loose, but you get the idea:

I reconstituted the brown rice (probably about 2 cups cooked rice) in about 3/4 of a cup of liquid dressing: some water, that amazing Kali olive oil, fresh organic lime juice because I wanted lime and not lemon, salt and white wine.  I whisked that up in my large, four-cup Pyrex measuring cup and then stirred in the rice and the cranberries.  I microwaved it for a minute at a time until the rice was reconstituted, soft and nice and hot.

In between microwaving, I prepped the rest of the salad.  I finely chopped about 1/2 a bunch of kale leaves (de-ribbed) and two organic scallions and dressed them with a little of the oil, more fresh lime juice and some salt (no pepper, I don't like pepper in absolutely everything, most of the time, I just like salt and olive oil. So does Rafael Nadal, btw :-) That went into a big bowl.

Then I added the hot, cooked rice to the kale leaves and mixed it gently to slightly cook the kale.  I garnished it with slivered almonds and organic grape halves.

This was amazing.  I almost ate the whole bowl (I had to stop myself, I didn't know what would happen if I ate too much raw kale :-)

What did you guys eat today?