Dinosaur Chips

Avie, munching on her "dinosaur chips."

While at Kate's house a few weeks ago, we picked kale from her garden, and she proceeded to make what she decided to call "dinosaur chips" (in hopes to more appeal to her son, James). These kale chips were so easy to make, and ended up being a hit with James, so I finally got around to making my own a week or so ago. And the girls loved them. I think they like that they are called "dinosaur chips," but they also just clearly like the crunch and the taste (it probably helps that Elsa is a salt fiend). Elsa did ask me why they were called "dinosaur chips" the other day, so I explained to her that they were made from a type of kale that is called "dinosaur kale." That seemed to be explanation enough.

I made three-and-a-half half-sheet pans of these chips last night, in preparation to include them in their packed snacks for playgroup today, and they are already gone. The girls have scarfed them all down. Yay for greens!

Dinosaur Chips

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Rinse kale leaves in cold water to remove dirt. With a sharp knife, run the knife along each side of the tough rib, running through each leaf. Discard the ribs. Cut the leaves into desired-sized chips (keep in mind that they will shrink some in the oven).

Place cut kale into a bowl and drizzle a fair amount of oil over the leaves. Toss the leaves to coat them evenly with the oil. Place chips on baking pan or cookie sheet (I have found that putting them on a cooling rack that is placed on top of the pan results in a perfect chip), spread out so they are not on top of or touching each other. Sprinkle with salt.

Bake for 15 minutes. Let cool, and enjoy!

A pretty terrible picture because of the lighting situation, but you can at least get the idea (this was post-cooking -- they were placed very closely together initially, so you can see how much they tend to shrink down.)