Friday, November 11, 2011

Bagged Kale?

The kale pickins have been awfully slim around my neighborhood, so I recently resorted to buying bagged kale from Trader Joe's.  It looked fresh and the quanity seemed equivalent in price to a loose bunch, so I figured I'd give it a try.


The first thing I noticed was that it wasn't organic.  The last organic bunch I'd bought was filled with- well, you know, so I wasn't too upset about that.  But then I noticed that it said "greens for cooking" and "cut, cleaned & ready to cook".  Why no raw love?  Perhaps because the kale leaves had been chopped with the stems?  Nevertheless, I washed the leaves thoroughly (only one or two cootified pieces per bag) and made my salad using Domestic Affair's dragon dressing, as recommended by Food Feud.

The stems are hiding; they know they're not wanted.
After the first two bites containing stems I knew this wasn't the solution to my kale drought.  And, even after I'd picked out the stems, the leaves were still inexplicably, overly bitter- despite my mildly sweet dressing.  I couldn't face another lunch of bitter grossness so I unpacked my prepared lunch portions, picked out the zillions of stems, and cooked the pre-dressed kale with chick peas, raisins, Braggs, and lots of Garam Masala.  Then I re-packed my lunches and hoped for the best.  It was nervy expecting cooked kale to be tasty at room temperature, but compared to the previous day's atrocity it was a gourmet meal.  There was still something off about it- it was too tough and sat in my stomach like a boulder, but as long as it was edible I didn't want it to go to waste.


Perhaps the bagged kale would be convenient for cooked recipes, but I'm still not sold on the taste; I'm going to stick with the fresh variety, de-stemmed.  Please note: try this at your own risk.  Sharing is not recommended; this kind of kale could turn someone against it for good!  I wonder if I am the only one who has had such a negative experience with bagged kale, or am I simply the only one who has ever purchased it?

6 comments:

  1. That's too bad about the TJ's bagged kale :-( I was hoping for a better report!

    The organic kale and my supermarket (Wegmans) has been absolutely exceptional this year and I made this amazing salad with raw kale and cooked grains:

    http://veganfazool.blogspot.com/2011/10/saturday-salad-kale-and-friends.html

    I am also a huge "dried fruit in my savory food" fan, so I put dried cranberries in the above salad!

    Boo to no organic kale at TJ's. Boo!! Here's to hoping I can keep getting my organic kale fix at Wegmans!

    XO

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  2. Come to think of it, I bought a bag of this stuff this past summer, and didn't buy it again. All those chopped stems were off-putting, and it seemed strangely tough and gnarly. The manager was all excited that TJs was finally carrying kale, but maybe they need some advice.

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  3. Hm, I definitely don't trust TJs on produce so I'm not really surprised. I hadn't attempted to buy kale from them because I find greens in bags get slimy very quickly anyway and also I read a review of TJ's three-greens mix (or something? It has collards, spinach, and something else) which was a terrible idea since collards take longer to cook than the other two. Yuck.
    And you were trying to be so good!

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  4. cooking kale helps to increase it's nutrition value.

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  5. I have had the similar experience with the bagged kale. Every since then I have only gotten organic fresh kale.

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  6. I've always been bummed that TJ's doesn't sell organic kale or collards. It meant that even though at one point TJ's was walking distance from my house, I still had to regularly drive to Whole Foods.

    Pre-chopped and bagged produce just never tastes as delicious as buying the whole, fresh vegetable (i.e. broccoli, cauliflower, spinach). I can see where it's a convenience for people and it's certainly better than not buying vegetables at all, but I think they're ultimately missing out on the optimum flavor. It sounds like the TJ's bagged kale is no exception. Too bad!

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