Kale, the secret ingredient

Kale is one of the healthiest foods on the planet -- all that dark green fiber, rich in Vitamins A, B, C, minerals, antioxidant flavonoids and other good stuff.  I like to eat it, but not cooked.  I loathed cooked spinach as a kid, have barely been able to get by that prejudice as a grownup, and don't like anything that even reminds me of it.

So every now and then we buy a big head of kale and I search for ways to incorporate it, raw, into our menus.  This head was getting toward the end, having performed yeoman duty in a couple of soups.  It also showed up as an additive to mashed potatoes (chopped, stirred in just before serving).

Then I came upon it one night when I was putting some rice into the rice cooker and decided that the same approach that worked for spuds might work here too.  Just before serving, stirred the green shreds into the rice.

Since I had cooked the rice with salsa it had some red stuff in it already, so the deep green made a colorful Italian-flag display.  It tasted great, and the warmed-over leftovers made a good breakfast.