Bacon Braised Kale

Well guys - I went to the gym today for the first time since before the wedding. The first wedding. A solid 4 months ago.   Needless to say it kicked my ass.  I am sore, I am tired, and I am more unfit than I care to discuss.  However I am determined to loose the bit of holiday weight I gained, and determined to embrace the bikinis sitting in my drawer.  After all this will be my first summer in 4 years in a country that actually gets hot.  Its time to rock some abs!

Alongside reconciling with the gym, I have also promised to eat healthy.  In 2011 I shed 30 pounds by committing to eating my 5 a day, cutting out mid week alcohol, and limiting myself to 1 piece of chocolate a day.  It felt great to lose the weight, and I honestly didn't find it too hard to cut back on the junk food.  I found as long as I used a smaller plate and made sure that I had eaten all my fruits and veggies I could eat whatever I wanted (in moderation) and still keep losing.  That combined with alternating between zumba, yoga and running and I was in wedding dress shape in no time!

The only tricky part of the whole thing was finding a way to eat all these veggies without getting bored of them.  Now some vegetables (i.e. sweet potato) I can eat every morning/noon/night and never get sick of.  Other veggies (i.e. broccoli) eating them really more than once a week make me horribly bored of them.  They say variety is the spice of life, and I found that as long as I could find different and exciting ways to cook these veggies, I could keep myself interested in eating them.

Which brings me to tonights bacon braised kale.  Now I love kale, I love dehydrated kale 'chips', I love kale in soups, I love kale mixed into stir fries, curries, you name it!  But it wasn't until I was reading my friend Paige's blog http://abalancedlifecooks.com/ that I first thought about braising kale.  (Btw you should totally check out Paige's blog - she is a really fun cook!)  You see the problem with always throwing kale into other dishes is that you lose the actual flavor of the kale; it just becomes a side note to the main flavors of whatever it is you are making.  I wanted to give kale its moment in the sun to shine in all its leafy glory.  Everything's coming up kale!

And so tonight kale made its star debut; braised in a little chicken stock until wonderfully tender and delicate and cooked with the tiniest bit of bacon - because every star needs a sidekick, and lets be honest bacon is the creme de la creme of sidekicks.  It stole the show and made me think this eating healthy again thing won't be so bad after all.  Now if only I could say the same thing for the gym...

Bacon Braised Kale
2 heaping bowl fulls of kale (de-stemmed and cut into strips)
1 rasher streaky bacon, cut into pieces (1-2 strips regular old American bacon of your choosing, pancetta works too)
1 cup chicken stock (240ml)
1/2 onion, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced (depending on how garlic-y you like it)
Salt
Pepper

1.  Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a sauce pan on medium heat.
2.  Add the onion and bacon and cook until the bacon starts to crisp
3.  Add the garlic and cook for a further minute
4.  Add the kale, and then pour the chicken stock on top. Depending on how much kale you have used you may have to use a little more or less stock, you want it to wilt the kale and have a little left in the pan)
5.  Cover the pan and reduce heat to low and let braise for 5-20 minutes depending on how tender you like your kale.  I stay closer to 5 minutes since I like a little crunch, but if you want it totally soft braise it longer.

Serve and enjoy!