But wait, there's more. Kale is an excellent source of calcium. One cup of cooked kale delivers 55 mg of calcium, and it's in a form the body readily absorbs. Recent medical research indicates that it's better to meet your calcium needs through your diet than through supplements and green vegetables including kale, collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, and broccoli, are packed with bio-available calcium.
Here's the catch: the only way to get kale's amazing benefits is to actually eat it in significant amounts. Just thinking to yourself, "I should eat more kale" won't do it. World's Healthiest Foods recommends eating a minimum of ¾ cup of kale and other cabbage family vegetables every day, or about 5 cups per week.
Not to worry. If you're not yet a kale convert, here's a recipe sure to win you over and one that will make it easy to add health promoting amounts of this amazing vegetable to your diet. What's more, this recipe includes tahini, a paste made of ground sesame seeds, which is another great calcium source; just one tablespoon of tahini gives you 64 mg of this bone-building mineral.
This is my version of a recipe that Susan Anderson, vegan recipe enthusiast extraordinaire, shared at a meeting of The Vegan Cookbook Club. The original recipe calls for marmalade, and the result is incredibly delicious. But I also tried a batch using my homemade Nanking cherry jelly and it was good too, although it turned the salad mauve-colored. So let your sense of adventure be your guide. Tahini is available in most grocery stores with the nut butters.
This dish is good warm or cold and can be easily doubled. One batch yields 3 to 4 cups, depending on the size of the bunch and whether you use lacinato or curly kale. Feel free to toss this dressing with other steamed leafy greens and build those bones.
Tahini-Marmalade Kale
2 servings
1 bunch of kale, any variety
2 tablespoons marmalade or other fruit preserve
2 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon hot sauce
½ teaspoon salt
Wash the kale and strip the leafy parts away from the midribs, discard the midribs.
Steam the kale in one inch of simmering water for 6 minutes.
While the kale cooks, combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl.
Drain the cooked kale, allow it to cool slightly, then chop or tear the leaves into medium-size pieces.
Add them to the bowl with the dressing and mix well.
Did you know . . .
Why do people go vegan? According to onegreenplanet.org the main reasons are to improve their health, to save the environment, and to reduce animal suffering. Many people are motivated by all three. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of "Eating Animals" and "Everything is Illuminated," writes: "One of the greatest opportunities to live our values, or betray them, lies in the food we put on our plates."
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/health/4344945-eat-kale-tahini-and-marmalade-strong-bones