I was hungry last night, and realized that we had some kale that had been in the refrigerator for about a month. It was a BIG bag of kale – large garbage bag size that we had rapidly hurried to harvest for the last delivery of last season with the expectation of freezing what was left for our own use throughout the winter. The freezing part just had not happened yet.
So. I had kale and leftover ham from a Christmas dinner. Sounded like time for soup! I took a big pot and filled it 1/3 of the way with water, and put it on the stove to get hot. Then I chopped up several potatoes – enough that I was sure I could feed three people dinner and still have leftovers. I put the potatoes in the pot, then moved on to onions. I chopped up a few small yellow onions and two bigger red onions. The yellow onions I sautéd in a frying pan to sweeten them up, then put them in the soup pot. The red ones I put directly in with the potatoes. Next I pulled kale off the stem by folding the leaves over (the long way) and pulling 1-2 inch strips off the stem. This way I had a nice size to go into the soup, and I could quality check the kale and easily put bad parts of leaves into the compost bucket. Then I chopped up the ham and added it. I went ahead and added a 1/4 teaspoon (t.) salt and maybe 1/2 t. oregano. Then let it sit for about 45 minutes – until the potatoes were soft – and started eating!
