Look! Even the kids like Kale Chips!
“What the heck do you make with kale?” I asked one of my girlfriends. The plants looked so pretty at the Downtown Farmer’s Market, but I’m not (yet) a green smoothie girl and I was pretty much at a loss for what to do with all my kale. My garden has largely failed, struggling through our very dry year and suffering from being too shaded by a tree that I’m guessing was not as tall when our garden plats were laid out years ago. But wouldn’t you know it, the one thing I don’t know how to use is going great. I just stared at it for a few weeks, but then it seemed wrong to not reward the kale’s perseverance under such challenging conditions. We had to find a way to eat this stuff. So I asked my friend Rachel, who was so helpful with my peach situation.
Rachel gave me a great looking recipe for an African Vegetarian Stew that involved kale. But given the freakish heat in Iowa right now, my ears really perked up when she said “Or you could do kale chips.” Kale, olive oil, salt, bake. This definitely seemed more my speed. (I’m not really a domestic goddess, I just pretend to be one for this blog).
Pre-baking with BBQ spice.
Kale Chips are crazy easy. Hat tip to Shutterbean for the recipe I used, but basically it’s really as simple as tear up kale, toss with olive oil, salt or….get wild with BBQ spice for BBQ kale chips! I used BBQ seasoning from Pampered Chef, and must thank my consultant, Annelie for that brilliant delish idea. Bake as 350 for 10 minutes. Word to the wise, do not wander out to check the chickens….10 minutes is very fast and they will burn! Kale….now a staple in our garden!
P.S. There are plenty of blogs with gorgeous photography in pristine kitchens. That is not this blog. That’s my wood stripping box on the left, Jack Daniels and my FC Kaiserslautern wine bottle from when we moved the fridge to it’s new home. My US Soccer Til I Die water bottle…gotta hydrate. And one plum tomato. My photos are a life story, not a museum.
We are in a drought in Iowa, and I’ve almost completely given up on growing corn this year in the garden. All is not lost, as the chickens love taking their dirt baths among the (pathetic) corn and tomato plants. I’m told by one of my fellow backyard farmers that chickens like a take baths in the dirt to clean their feathers and get cool. This is definitely the place for them!
In my cleanout of 2012 photos, I came across this beauty, of what was once thrown in heaps in our back lot. Someday, we will look back on this and laugh, hopefully sitting in our gorgeous garden lot!
I posted on Facebook asking for ideas for what to do with my 10 gallons of peaches, and by far, the most interesting idea in my book was “peach brandy.” I did some research online, and found a recipe for peach brandy on 
I’m starting this post with a photo of the chickens happily munching on our peach cuttings from our peach tree. They’re happy here, and I need to focus on that. It’s taken me a few days to write another post after the last one, where my nine chickens looked so happy running around our yard. A couple days after I posted that, someone broke into our fenced back yard, tore apart our chicken run, and terrorized our girls with a hack saw that the criminal(s) brought with, and a sledgehammer we’d left out from some construction. When my husband found them, our girls were still loose in the yard, two were out of the yard, and one had been either chased or beaten to death (it was during the 100+ temps heat spell, so chasing a chicken to exhaustion wouldn’t have been impossible). I can only call this devastating to all of us, humans and chickens alike. As our nine year old daughter put it “This is awful two ways, one because they look so lonely, just the six of them, and now they’re going to be harder to mother.” (Yes, I could not love that child and her animal loving heart any more).
Here’s the thing: I hate being sad. Sad sucks, and I was really sad about our chickens. It’s been a rough summer generally with my Dad and Sis both in the hospital for a while, and I had just about had it with sadness. So, we adopted a kitten from the 
We are in the middle of an unbearable heat wave, and the kids are bugging me for anything cold about once an hour. (The Hatton House has window AC units, which are more than adequate….until the temp gets over the mid-90s. After that, it’s just hot). I really can’t stand loading them up on high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors to cool them down, since my kids tend to get hyper when they eat fake food…and no one wants hyped up kids in a heat wave!
Peach season has arrived at the Hatton House! From our single peach tree, we harvested almost 10 gallons of peaches before we ran out of buckets. We’ve already frozen some, given some to neighbors, and made a peach cobbler. Still not at all sick of them. Peaches grown organically and eaten 100 degree hot right off the tree is an intensely delicious experience!
Hatton House Diaries 