Awesome Sesame Kale Chips

I never thought of kale chips as being difficult, but when I brought a bowl to a party everyone ooohed- and aaaahhed and said they had trouble making good ones. I must have lucked into a great recipe from the beginning. The chips are crispy, melt-in-your-mouth perfection (and this is coming from a certified kale hater). By the way, even if you are a kale hater, you should go ahead and try growing it anyway. It's easy and you can hide kale in a lot of things to take advantage of the health benefits without having to taste it straight-up. But these chips make kale the star, and they are awesome and addictive.

Garden Greens Pesto

Continuing on the theme of recipes to help eat your greens, this simple non-basil-based pesto makes a great healthy dip for crackers and chips, or sandwich spread. It's an easy way to use up or incorporate greens into your diet. Depending on the greens you choose, the dip may be almost sweet in flavor, or more sharp. I use some combination of kale, chard, beet greens, broccoli greens, spinach, arugula - whatever's growing. If I do have some basil, I add it, but it's far from necessary. A little mint adds a nice flavor if you like that kind of thing.

The finished product - simple, delicious, healthy.

Hot Greens Dip

Make this unholy mixture of healthy greens and molten cheese with whatever greens you feel like you “should” be eating for their healthful properties: kale, chard, spinach, broccoli greens, Chinese broccoli, radish greens, and so on. Go ahead and turn it into something you’ll actually like: this is a delicious, warm and satisfying dip to be slathered on French bread slices or eaten with tortilla chips. I make this with far more greens than any other spinach-and-artichoke type recipe calls for. Just keep packing the greens into this dip until it almost feels righteous.

Hummus

I've made hummus many a time, just winging it without looking at a recipe, and I have always been dissatisfied with the results. Frustrated and determined to make GOOD hummus, I was intrigued by a recipe that claims the secret is peeling the chickpeas. Every single one of them. If this was the key to good hummus, I was willing to try it. However, being an experimentalist, I was also keen to know: how much of a difference does peeling the chickpeas make? Would anyone notice the difference between peeled and unpeeled? Fortunately for you, I did the experiment so you don't have to, including blind taste tests with my friends. Here are the results.

The best hummus I've ever made.