It has come to my attention that I gotta feed y’all some vegetables. It has also come to my attention that some of you eat raw kale (stop it) and the rest of you think kale is nasty. This shit doesn’t need to take more than ten minutes to make, but I’ll spend some time here taking it back to the start – the grocery store.

Honestly, I go to Whole Paycheck (aka Whole Foods) just to have a fun day. The grocery store isn’t scary! Just stop buying cut up veggie witcha lazy asses. First of all, that bag of pre-cut pre-washed kale is 60% stem. Secondly, I swear it goes bad faster. You try to tightly wrap it back what’s left of the plastic wrap it came in after you tore it up after you had your hands all in it. Now you throw it in a drawer cause you’re tired of looking at your failure and the rest goes bad and what you’re left with is a memory of oily kale stems. Or whatever. Oh, and it was way more expensive.

Just buy a whole bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day. This goes for any vegetable! Make the whole batch! Stop playing yourself like two bites of kale is even enough.

This recipe is transferable to every green anything so EAT VEGETABLES.

Recipe

1. Buy one full bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day.
2. In the pan, put down olive oil and turn the heat on shy of medium. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and saute for a couple minutes.

• PRO TIP: it looks like you’re about to make a lot of kale, and this makes it tempting to glug down hella olive oil. Resist. One turn around the pan is enough.
• If you’re making this as part of a meal, I put the olive oil, garlic, and crushed red all in the pan and then I wait until all of the other parts of my meal are done to turn on the heat. In my head this makes the oil more garlicky but do you.

3. Add hella kale! IT COOKS DOWN A LOT. Add way more than you think you want!
4. In a separate DRY pan on LOW heat, add pine nuts and toast them. This is my favorite way to elevate this side dish.
5. Go away. If you keep stirring you’ll never get any crispy bits and it’ll take forever. Once it cooks down some, add your salt and smoked paprika and taste.
6. When it’s cooked to how you like it, squeeze some lemon juice over the top and let it cook down just a smidge. Bet you won’t have leftovers.

Tips

You can vary this a billion ways:

• Add miso paste to the garlic at the beginning and cook that through before you add your kale for a savory kick.
• Add shallot or thinly sliced red onion, or hell even yellow onion, and caramelize it first.
• Use dif nuts, sliced almonds or chunky walnuts are both so yummy here.
• Add zest from that lemon if you’re feelin zesty.