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Chard Chips

Ellen and I were cruising Whole Foods last week looking for a crunchy snack we were told about by a friend that was actually good for us.  Most crunchy snacks, even those in the health section of the store, are toxic because most are fried in oil.  As soon as you heat oil up it goes rancid.  And expose that hot oil to starches (like corn, rice, wheat, potato, even vegetables) causes it to form carcinogenic compounds.  Alternatively, chips that are baked are usually pure starch which turns to sugar within minutes of being eaten.

So what were these amazing healthy crunchy snacks?… Kale Chips.  Yeah, that sounds disgusting.  But in truth, if you like the bitter flavor of kale they are not bad.  Some people love bitters as it fits their constitutional type.  Here we have whole leaves of kale dusted in ground cashews, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, red pepper, and salt and then dried at a low temperature until crisp… pretty darn healthy.  Then I looked at the price – almost $7 for 3 ounces!

So I said “Hey, how hard can this be?  I have fresh chard growing in my garden, cashews and nutritional yeast in the cupboard, and sea salt on the stove.”  Plus my chard is not bitter.  Since I hate bitter as that is not my constitutional type, I figured creating my own chips at a fraction of the cost without the bitterness had to be a win.

Pick (or purchase) 15 – 20 nice chard leaves
Wash and dry them well
Grind up 2/3 cup cashews in the blender
Add 11/2 Tbs. Nutritional Yeast powder
½ tsp. sea salt and grind till a fine powder

Juice a couple lemons and one at a time brush the chard leaves with the lemon juice then dust with your cashew mixture.  Arrange the leaves on your food dehydrator trays (of course you have a food dehydrator – if not here are a couple links) and dry till crispy.

Nesco
Vegikiln

For fun variations you might add dried garlic, or red pepper, or savory herbs to your cashew mixture.  Shazzam – healthy crunchy snacks.

 
 
P.S.  I actually tried making kale chips yesterday because Ellen likes the stronger taste.  The ones I made did not taste bitter and were really good.  The dried curly kale was so crunchy it melted in my mouth like cotton candy.   I have also tried dredging tomato slices in the same coating mix and drying them – fantastic.