Kale Yeah!

Kale. Yeah. You're kaling me. I do not know why people keep saying hurtful things to me, like, hey, let's go for a run, or do you want to try this? Kale.

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole Johnsey Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of Kitchen Garden Revival. And you guessed it, I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. But I'm also busy with life as a wife, mom to four wild kids. Kids and two adorable puppies.

Wait, switch that.

Four adorable kids and two wild puppies. Yeah, that's it. Despite my crazy schedule, I'm on a mission to never stop growing, both as a gardener and simply as a person. And so I've created this podcast to help you do the same each week. You're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good?

I think so.

Now let's dig in.

Hey there, and welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. I'm Nicole Burke, and I'm so excited you're here with me. And don't worry, I'm done with the garden puns. Okay, today we're talking about the vegetable that you love to hate. You guessed it, it's kale. Here on the Grow youw Self podcast, we're going to dig in to surprising stories about food that we eat every day, or at least foods that we see and maybe should be eating every day. And of course, I had to kick it off with my favorite vegetable from my kitchen garden. It's kale. Kale. Yeah. What we're going to do in this episode is first talk about what's really going on with these vegetables and trends that are happening and stories that you've probably never heard about these vegetables. Then we're going to figure out a little bit more about the plant itself, and I'm going to give you tips on how to grow it yourself. Finally, we're going to have something super fun. At least I Think so. Called a food fight. So stay tuned and keep listening. And let's dig in to the subject of kale. Did you know that about 30 years ago, Kale was. Let's just say it was seen quite differently than it is today. I don't even know if you were alive 30 years ago, but 30 years ago, I was. And in between my softball games and my cheerleading stunts, I loved heading one place on the weekends, and that was to Pizza Hut. Have you ever heard of Pizza Hut? Pizza Hut at that time in my hometown, was the place to hang on the weekends. And that's because they had this amazing buffet full of all kinds of pizza. And you could just keep eating it and eating it and eating it. Did I say you could eat a lot of pizza? Yeah, that's what happened there. So you're probably thinking, why is Nicole talking about Pizza Hut when we're supposed to be talking about kale? Well, it's because the rumor has it that 30 years ago, the largest buyer of kale in the United States was Pizza Hut. And don't be fooled. Pizza Hut wasn't serving kale salad. They were simply using kale as a garnish on, guess what? Their buffet line. So in between all that cheese and all those carbs and all that pepperoni, they were tossing a little bit of kale here and there to break up the white and the white and the red. They needed some green on that buffet line, and kale provided just what they needed. So that was 30 years ago, but things have kind of changed, right? I mean, when I said the word kale, you knew exactly what I was talking about. I'm pretty sure 30 years ago, when I was munching on that Pizza Hut buffet, I had no idea what that curly green stuff was even called. From 2011 to 2014, some crazy stuff happened with kale, like our interest in the United States and kale literally skyrocketed. In fact, farming of kale grew more than 57% from the years 2007 to 2012. That's a lot of kale, right? So CBS said that in 2016, kale farmers said that because the vegetable was so popular, their seed prices had risen 80% from 2013. So in three years, their seed had gone up 80% in price. Gosh, what a pain, right? I guess we didn't realize our obsession with kale was hurting the farmers. Believe it or not, kale isn't just available in the produce section. It's actually now marketed in over 400 different products, ranging from, like, Packaged kale chips, which is crazy, of course, all the way to kale and energy bars. Wow. Have you had kale energy bars? I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound so great to me. Well, let's talk about kale. Let's talk about what kind of plant it is and a little bit of its history, and then we'll get back to this crazy spike in kale popularity and figure out how it kind of, like, became the homecoming queen of the kitchen garden. So kale is in the brassicaei family. I think that's how you say the Latin term. I just like to say brassica for short, because I speak English. It actually thrives most in the cool season in the garden. So when the temperatures range from, like, I don't know, 35 degrees to, like, 65 degrees Fahrenheit, that's when kale really thrives. But kale can actually hold on in colder parts of the year, and warmer parts of the year. Most people don't know, but kale is actually like a modification of the original mustard plant. Oh, I should have mentioned. In the brassica family are other brassica plants that you probably already know, like broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, arugula, and mustards. Obviously, they're all in the same family as kale. And the smart scientists say that, gosh, over 2,000 years ago, there was this wild mustard that looked and resembled more like a cabbage. And the farmers and the smart people basically started to do different kinds of modifications with that plant. And kale was developed bas from their goal to have longer, curlier leaves. So unlike with a cabbage, where you'd eat the entire or harvest the whole head at once, they wanted a vegetable where they could kind of pick off one leaf at a time. And then all of a sudden, boom, we have kale, and the world will never be the same. So that's been over 2,000 years ago. And I know these days we talk a lot about modification, and it's kind of scary, but it's kind of fun to look back and realize that all foods have gone through somewhat of this process at some point in time. I have to be honest. Like, even realizing about this modification 2000 years ago surprised me. You may have heard of a recent modification known as kalettes. So I think a British company actually cross bred Brussels sprouts with kale, and they developed this cute little plant that, like, looks like a Brussels sprout, but instead of little sprouts of little cabbages on the ends, it's all these little sprouts of kale. Is that cute or what? Some people even call them lollipops. But kalettes just sounds a lot like Rockettes to me, which gets me excited. Kale is packed with nutrients. It is so, so good for you. So here's a couple of stats for you. Kale has over 900% of your daily needs for vitamin K, over 600% of your needs for vitamin A, and it's even got more vitamin C. And a serving of kale than an. Is that crazy? I think so. Though it's not as impressive as the 900% or the 600% serving of kale covers 14% of your daily calcium needs. Now, if you come from the same camp I do, I often hear that dairy is like the only source I can rely on for calcium. But it's fun to know that I can also get some calcium from my kale. One thing the scientists say is that cooking kale, unlike with other vegetables, doesn't actually diminish its nutrients. So with some vegetables, when we cook them and heat them, the scientists say that the food suddenly is not as nutritious for us. Not so for kale. At least that's what the studies say. So now that we know how awesome kale is for our body, even when we cook it, let's talk about this crazy trend and kale becoming like the thing. In fact, back in, I guess, five or so years ago, kale was basically like, you know, the little black dress, like it was like the thing that everybody wanted to eat or showed off eating or was avoiding. It was the superfood that everybody was talking about. So in these recent years, in the last decade, kale has literally started popping up everywhere. Like I said, in over 450 products outside of the produce section, including skin care products and even nail polish. I mean, can you imagine like painting kale on your nails? It's crazy. The story is that Whole Foods even tried to make kale gating into like an actual thing. And being the cheerleader that I am, that kind of gets me excited. I don't know, maybe that could be in my future or something. Like I said, the demand of kale has really grown in the last decade. And I loved reading the story of Sandy Cronock in a Bon Appetit article. So she is a co owner of East Carolina Organics and she distributes organic produce throughout the Carolinas to retailers and to restaurants. And she gave these numbers to Bon Appetit. She said that in 2004, she sold 260 cases of kale just shy of $6,000 worth of purchases. And then 10 years later, she sold more than 28,000 cases. So she went from 260 to 28,000 for over $700,000. Now, I'm sure she might have been even growing her business during this time, but just to see the change in the market demand over a decade is crazy. The kale growing capital of the country is actually not in the Carolinas, but in California. If you listen to episode one, you know that food trucking is a major thing in the United States, where most of our food is produced on big farms in big quantities. This is kind of a bummer when it comes to kale, because kale is actually one of those vegetables that could be grown almost anywhere, and it tastes so much better when it hasn't sat on a truck for a really long time. My hero, this lady, Sandy Cronock, who talked to Bon Appetit. She actually said that was true for her, too. She gardens in the Carolinas or farms, I guess, technically. And she said that the Carolinas is an ideal place. In fact, all of the south, she said, is an ideal place for growing kale. I've experienced that firsthand when I was gardening myself, and then with all my clients in Houston. With Rooted Garden, we see that our clients have huge success with kale. And kale can be planted early in the fall, then it grows through the winter. It endures frost, even stays through the spring. And then as long as we keep it watered and well tended in the summer, it can even endure the heat. So I see that happening with my clients in Houston. And then now that I live here in the Chicago area, kale was actually my biggest crop this past year. In fact, I had so much of it, I couldn't keep up with it. It was such a big producer. The leaves got bigger and bigger. The plants got wider and wider. It just kept coming. So I know if I can grow so much kale in Chicago and in Houston and Sandy's over in Carolina saying the same thing. I'm pretty sure we can all bank on the fact that kale can grow really well wherever we're living, so we don't have to rely just on California to feed us. Now, not everybody is saying that kale is super popular. And in fact, there's some people saying that pretty soon kale is going out of fashion, or it already has in 2015. Those guys at Zagat, they run all those fun surveys to kind of see the trends of what's happening? They do a national dining trend, and their survey in 2015 made them declare that kale is over as a dining trend. Like O V E r done for. They quoted. People are equally tired of kale. Just 27% of diners across the nation love the leafy green. However, some are still obsessed with it enough to know name their child after it. Oh, my goodness. I totally missed the opportunity to name one of my children Kale. That is a big bummer. But here we are in 2020 and we're still talking about kale. So maybe we're just part of the 27%. I'm not sure. But it does seem that there is. I don't know that kale's hanging on in popularity. Let's just say that. So let's go back to the way this story actually started. Who began this amazing growth in popular Bring kale out of the Pizza Hut buffet line and into hundreds of products at the grocery store, onto a sweatshirt that Beyonce wears, and into this podcast. Well, let me introduce you to another one of my heroes, Oberon Sinclair. I hope I'm saying your name right. She is the actual primary reason that all this kale craziness happened. It's the reason we're adding kale to our smoothies and soups and even our beauty routines. Maybe. So Oberon Sinclair owns a PR firm called My Young Auntie, and so she's kind of a genius at this whole marketing thing, and she created her own campaign for Kale. Is that crazy? She created a campaign for Kail. I got to read an article written by Mind Bodygreen, another one of my favorites. And with MindBody Green, she admitted that her PR firm was actually the one behind the creation of the American and Kale Association. So she said she was pretty sure that if people knew that it was a PR firm that was promoting kale, then they would be skeptical. So she actually created her own association, the AKA the American Kale Association. And she said it was her proudest campaign ever. Mindbody Green asked her why she'd do this, and she said, well, I've been trying to convert people for years to eat in a healthy way. I've always loved kale. It's an amazing vegetable. And she said, I just want it to do something differently. I think that Oberon is so cool, and I need to come up with my own association. Maybe I'll come up with the American Kitchen Garden Association. So Oberon began to promote kale through the American Kale association, and apparently it worked because the U.S. census of Agriculture showed that between 2007 and 2012, the number of kale farms grew from 954 in the U.S. to 2,500. In just five years, it more than doubled. That's impressive, Oberon. So whether you love kale or whether you love to hate kale, whether you love this trend or you're kind of ready for it to be done, we have to agree that you should put at least a little bit of kale into your diet, right? I mean, all that vitamin K and A and C and even calcium, I mean, it's just a no brainer. And if you're going to eat it, which you should, then I want to encourage you to also grow a little bit of it yourself. So now I want to teach you a few things about growing kale in your own kitchen garden. First, I already mentioned that kale grows in the cool seasons, or at least it does best in the cool seasons of the year. So this means when the temperatures are, say, 40 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit outside, you can know that that's a time when kale is going to thrive. I highly recommend growing kale from seed. It's the least expensive way to grow it. I get great results when growing kale from seed. My favorite sources and details on starting seeds are going to be in the show notes. @gardenary.com podcast you can find out more about planting kale from seed and find out more details about where I get my seed and how to plant it. So kale does great from seed. Generally, when you plant seed, you could start indoors. So if you have a light system or a heating mat, you can start your kale seed at as soon as January and then start to move it outdoors as soon as the ground can be. Or your kitchen garden can be dug into and planted. So you generally want the soil temp to be around 45 degrees before you put seed in there or seedlings. So you can start indoors, or you can take that seed and plant directly into your kitchen garden once it's warm enough. After you plant your seeds, you want to keep them well watered, and then you can expect that in about, say, two, almost three months you can start to harvest. So generally from seed planting, it takes about 50 to 55 days for those leaves to be big enough and long enough for you to start picking from them and putting them in your dishes. Now, I have a few favorite varieties of kale that I love to eat. The first is Blue Scotch curled. This is a more compact plant. The leaves are Nice and curly. And I generally found it's one of the easier plants to grow and the more resistant to pests, which is awesome. I love using the blue Scotch curled in like sauteed dishes or just like cooking them like Southern greens. I'm a Southerner at heart, guys. Or I love to use them in smoothies and even in salads. Another kind of kale I love to grow is red Russian kale. This plant grows really big. The leaves have a red or a pinkish tinge to them, and the leaves in general are softer and not as bumpy. These are more prone to pests, is what I found. But they. They do grow so prolific, and I like the sweetness of the leaves, so I end up using this more often in raw dishes. It's just a fun kale to cut really quickly and bring into a fresh salad. The other kale that I love growing is Toscano kale, or otherwise known as dinosaur kale. This is that huge kale that. I mean, it's a reason. I think that's why it's called dinosaur kale. It's super dark green, and the leaves are very savoy, which means they're super bumpy. Super bumpy leaves means that they have a higher frost tolerance and they're just packed with nutrition. I don't think the bumps mean the nutrition part, but the grain definitely does. I love using the Toscano kale in fresh salads and also cooking them down in dishes. Joshua McFadden, who is one of my hero cooks. Yeah, cooks, Chefs, something. He has a book called Six Seasons, and his kale salad recipe is awesome in that book. And I love to make it with my dinosaur kale. So those are the three kinds. Kinds of kales I love to grow. Now you can grow kale, like I said, through most of the seasons in your kitchen garden. The main trouble you're going to have when you're growing kale is with caterpillars. So those come to your kale with moths. So moths will fly into your garden often in the early evening or early morning, and they'll lay eggs on the underside of your kale leaves. Those eggs turn into caterpillars, and the caterpillars do what caterpillars do. They start munching. So the sign that you have an issue is you're going to start to see holes in your le, and that's a sign that something besides you is eating your kale. The main way that I deal with pests in my kale garden is honestly by harvesting and using the greens more quickly. So I figured that if I can get to my harvest before the pests can, then I'm winning. So anytime I see an issue or start to see holes, I'll come and cut away all the leaves that I see holes on. And then I'll just make a note to stay around the plant and harvest from it more often. There are different sprays and, you know, organic ways you can deal with the pests. But in general, I try to just keep my shadow over the plant, and that's generally the best way to prevent pest issues. But besides the caterpillar, you're not going to have a ton of other challenges with growing kale. Now, once you start to grow kale and you're ready to harvest, I recommend only harvesting what you're going to eventually, right away, pull to your plate and enjoy in that moment. You know, kale does have somewhat of a shelf life, but part of the great benefit of growing your own is getting to enjoy that just cut flavor that you can't get literally anywhere else. If you do need to harvest more kale at once, or let's say you've bought kale from a grocery store or from the farmer's market, the sign that your kale isn't going to be so great is when the leaves start to lose that dark green luster. They even turn maybe yellow, and especially once they turn to mush. That's when you know the kale has lost its flavor. Big bummer, right? I'm sure we've all experienced this. This is part of where food waste comes and the need to kitchen garden. So have you ever bought greens and you store them in your fridge only to pull them out and use them and realize they've basically been rotting in your fridge ever since you purchased them? This happens a lot, and I think it's often because those leaves really aren't meant to travel or to store long term. Like, think about it, it's a leaf, you know, it's not even like a fruit or a bean or something. So it's very hard for a leaf to maintain its structure and to keep that freshness when it's traveled and sat for a very long time. As soon as you taste a freshly harvested kale leaf, I promise you won't be a hater anymore. There's something about getting to eat it right away from the garden that will make you a believer. All right, I promised you at the end of this episode, we were gonna have a real legit food fight. So today, what we're going to do is put kale up against a major competitor and see how it squares up. So this food fight in this corner, in this one corner, we're gonna have kale. Kale made famous by Beyonce and her sweatshirt and also apparently by Oberon Sinclair. Thanks, Oberon. I really hope I said your name right today. And in this other corner, we have the beloved. Can you guess it? Spinach. Spinach made famous by the cartoon character Popeye, who loved to to fill his mouth with nasty, slimy, canned spinach to make his muscles grow. So who do you think would win between kale and spinach? Well, you're about to find out. So when it comes to nutritional value, both kale and spinach have different strengths. Spinach is going to beat out kale and its percentage per serving size for iron and magnesium nutrients. So spinach wins. It gets one point for more iron and more magnesium. And those are pretty important, I think thing. But kale, believe it or not, is higher in protein and calcium. Just slightly, but it is higher. So we're going to give kale a point for that one. But spinach wins when it comes to folate. Not sure if you're familiar with folate, but it's that thing you've got to have, especially if you are pregnant. Like, I got in trouble for not having enough folate during all my pregnancies. Folic acid is being proven to be, like, an important part of just general health. And spinach wins if you need some more of it. So two points for spinach, one point for kale. Let's see what's next. When it comes to vitamin C, you wonder who wins. It's kale. So kale's got more vitamin C, four times the amount of vitamin C as spinach, and way more vitamin A. It's also got way more vitamin K too. So that's three vitamins that it's kind of kicking spinach with. So we're going to give at least one more point to kale for that one, maybe two. So we're going to say two to two right now. Two points for kale, two points for spinach. Now, if it comes to calories and you're counting calories, which I don't necessarily think you should be, spinach actually wins this one. So one serving of spinach is actually half as many calories as the calories for the same serving of kale. But let me just tell you, if you're counting calories and you're eating kale and spinach, don't Even go there, like, just enjoy your kale and spinach. The calories don't matter for this. But if you are, then we're gonna give a point for spinach. But here's a unique thing or a thing you might not know. So if you cook down spinach, you know that spinach basically turns into, like, nothing. Like, once you heat it with a little bit of water, it's just like. Like, very, very little. So for this reason, it actually takes three cups of raw spinach to make the same amount of one and a half cups of kale. So what this means is you don't have to eat as much of it to make that serving size to your body. So if you're not loving eating vegetables, like, if it's kind of hard to choke down kale or spinach, then kale is the thing you want to be eating. You can get more of it, especially when it's cooked. All right, so speaking of amounts, let's talk price. It seems that grocery stores in general charge more for spinach than they do for kale. So if you're looking for a savings, like, you want to get more value nutritionally for less money, then it looks like kale is your girl. So kale gets a point for that one, too. All right, so let's level these up. Let's figure out who's going to win the food fight. Kale's got more vitamin K, more A, and more C, and it's cheaper, and you don't have to eat quite as much to get those nutrients. But spinach wins in terms of folate, magnesium, and iron, all very important, right? And it wins in calories, although you can tell I don't care about that. So let's see. I think I gotta call it, don't you? I'm thinking of the winner. Like, I'm looking at these guys punching these girls, punching each other out, and I have to say, I think kale is the winner. I mean, all those vitamins for a pretty low price, and you can get it in a pretty small serving. I think you got to give the winner to kale. Right now, obviously, you should eat both. And they say some weird things about if you eat too much kale, then something happens to your thyroid or something. I don't know. All I know is there's probably pretty few people in the world that are eating too much kale for the most part. I think we all need to eat a little bit more kale and spinach and whatever other green. So let's move. Let's look back at this crazy journey kale has taken from the pizza hut buffet 30 years ago through Oberon Sinclair's Genius Campaign to now being in like 400 products in the store, even in nail polish. Whether you love it or you hate it, or you love to hate it, I think we have to agree that kale is a superfood that can make a huge difference in our whole and happy lives. And you gotta grow a little bit yourself. So if you're just starting out and you want to start growing a plant in your kitchen garden, I have to tell you, kale is a great place to start. So like I said, there are notes on how to do so. More details about seed starting in kale. In the show notes@gardenary.com podcast you can get all the details and I cannot wait to see all the kale that you grow yours. I love being part of the kale movement. I got my own kale sweatshirt just like Beyonce's, and I think that anytime we can put the emphasis on something that's good for us, then the whole world wins. So I'm super excited that I made my way away from the Pizza Hut buffet into a kale. Loads and loads of kale in my kitchen garden. I think that's a good journey and hopefully you'll get to take that journey too. So no matter what you do, keep on kalin them with kindness and just don't kale my vibe, okay? And if any of you out there want to tell me, you know, to stop with these garden puns, then I just gotta say, oh, kale, no. That was so bad, wasn't it? Thank you so much for joining me in the Grow Yourself podcast. I am so excited to have you here and I hope you feel inspired to look at your food in a different way. I hope that these stories give you insights, inspiration to see the magic behind the food that we eat every day, and also encourage you to take care of your body, to give yourself exactly what your body needs. All these vitamins, this folate, this magnesium, these K's as C's, all of it. Fill yourself up with the good stuff and I promise you'll see a difference every single day. Thanks again for listening. Go check out the show notes@gardenary.com podcast and I'll see you next time. Let it all go down. Let it all make your mind.