Kale Caesar Salad

I love raw shredded kale in caesar salad.  I also love it dressed in creamy tahini dressing, or a bright asian dressing, but you really beat a garlicky caesar dressing with parmesan and bacon. The hearty leaves stand up well to strong flavours.

When you massage the dressing into the raw leaves, they soften and become a shade darker. They’re chewier than typical salad greens, so best if sliced very thinly (like shredded cabbage for slaw).

In other news, I’m having a wardrobe crisis. I wore most of my regular clothes throughout my pregnancy, so everything I own is either bagged out, or worn out, and I’m a major possession purger, so my possessions have been edited down to a selection of sweat pants and cocktail dresses. (The bubbliest of champagne problems, I know.)

And in my attempt to restock my wardrobe with some affordable, trendy clothes I realized that the day has come that I can no longer shop at Forever 21. (My husband is like, FINALLY.)

See, most of the shirts there are already super tiny because of the horrible 90s crop top thing happening to the great dismay of everyone who looks frightening in high-waisted jeans. And to add insult to injury, they started making their sizes a bit smaller since I had my 2nd baby. I’ll throw serious shade at anyone who argues.

Anyway, I was super excited to see a few cute longer, flowy boho style tops (amidst a sea of dubious-looking t-shirts no larger than sports bras) so grabbed them and headed for the changing room (along with a single crop top, just for curiosity).

When I pulled the first top over my head, I got stuck. There was a tiny piece sewn together at the bottom. WTF. With horror, I realized that those lovely (appropriate) shirts were not shirts, in fact, they were tiny ROMPERS.

But I was committed, with my arms and head heartily entangled in the thing, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll try.

I learned a hard lesson that day. Turns out that Forever 21 has nothing left to offer me but under-boob cleavage tops and horrible things that are basically thongs with sleeves that’ll trap you and make you do tiny, sad yelps until a 15-year-old salesgirl helps you disentangle yourself while judging you, hard.

In any case, this means that now I have to stop elbowing middle schoolers out of my way in the changing room and buy grown-up clothes at grown-up stores. Sigh.

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Kale Caesar Salad

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Servings 4

Salad

Canadian

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 large garlic clove minced
• ½ tsp kosher salt or to taste
• 1 bunch purple kale or any kale, stems discarded, leaves thinly sliced
• ½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese plus more for topping
• 6 cooked slices of bacon crumbled

Instructions

 

• Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt in a large salad bowl.  Add the kale and first toss, then massage the dressing into the leaves a bit with your hands until they become a shade darker.  Add parmesan and bacon; toss.  Serve individual plates topped with more parmesan.

Last Updated on March 15, 2016 by Jennifer Pallian BSc, RD