Gardening for healthy choices

As part of our healthy eating plan, I am adding a completely new garden this year. We had a square foot garden with tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans last year. However this year I have decided to add a separate greens garden. It will have nothing but rotating crops of lettuce, kale and any other "greens" I decide to try. I want to have a continuous variety through out the year. I have found several 4 x 4 foot gardens which will be perfect for the 2 of us.

Last years square foot garden

Our garden is 12 x 12 so I figure we will double everything. Here is a picture of our garden last spring. I can't wait until we can start putting plants in this year! I am also hoping to grow some herbs along the side of the garden so it will be one stop shopping. I have free range chickens so I have a wonderful compost pile that I use for my garden.

Kale dish with Macaroni and Cheese

I bought kale for the first time yesterday. I know! My mother-in-law will tell you I hate anything green. That is not exactly true. I rarely like vegetables cooked. I like raw vegetables better. However, I decided to try this recipe since it looked SO good. It is Dawn's Kale Side Dish. The only difference for me was I left off the cashews. We can't chew nuts. Oh my, this dish is fabulous!!! The kale that cooked up crunchy was great. I had seen a recipe for Kale chips but wasn't sure about trying them. But now I will definitely make them. What I really liked about the recipe is that the complete nutritional value is available  I didn't have to run it through a recipe calculator. 

We are swapping days we eat meat now so this was a non-meat day. I paired a Classic Macaroni and Cheese dish that I wanted to try with it.  I felt comfortable using this recipe since I got it from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute website. It also had the nutritional values already figured. This dish was also very good. I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.

We like to eat simple meals. However, you might want  to add a fish or chicken dish with this meal to round it out. We will definitely eat this again. Let me know if you like it.

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