I’ve been making kale chips like it’s my job. 
It’s a super high-maintenance pain in the ass and a totally wonderful moving meditation.
Kale is weirdly impossible to find at supermarkets in Switzerland. You can’t get it anywhere. (What I would give for those cheesy kale chips they used to sell at Trader Joe’s.)
So when the community garden up the street set out a few bunches of Federkohl at the little roadside veggie stand, you’d better believe we jumped on that shit. I grabbed both for 2 CHF each, put my little coins in the Kasse, and triumphantly marched home to show my family.
Kale chips take forever to make and you eat the whole batch in like five minutes. They are such an investment. But a worthy one.
Wash the kale. (Right away, so you don’t get cute garden bugs all over your kitchen.)
One by one, tear the kale off the thick stems into small chip-size pieces. Put them in a bowl.
Salad-spin those puppies to get all the water off. They’re still not dry, so you have to lay them out one by one on a towel on your kitchen counter. Because wet kale = soggy chips.
Leave them out to dry for literally hours.
Come back later and drizzle a little avocado oil over them. Massage it all over the leaves. Every last bit. (This is where it starts to feel really meditative. Well, the tearing part too.)
Spread them out on baking trays. Sprinkle liberally with salt and garlic.
Bake at 150° C (sorry fellow Americans, I’ve gone to the dark side and don’t know what that would be in F. Google it.) You have to check them every minute after about 7 minutes. And then every 30 seconds. Because they go from soggy to burned in a flash.
Rotate the trays in the oven constantly. Like you would watch your toddler in Venice. Never looking away.
Finally take them out. Check that they’re crispy. Sprinkle on nutritional yeast to get that cheesy flavor.
Eat half of them stealthily as you call your family over. Then proudly watch your kid inhale three trays’ worth and bask in the knowledge that for one shining moment you are a superior parent because he is eating something green.
Sorry, Karen. I will not.
Because those very ethics of compassion and non-violence and interdependence make it clear the Christofascist lens of the modern-day GOP is completely incompatible with a yogic way of being.
