The good old humble Kale.

Everyone raves about their amazing health benefits, but not everyone likes the taste.

I certainly didn’t, but that’s only because I never really knew how to cook them. In fact, I didn’t know how to cook anything until my first child was born, my sweet loving daughter.

Yes, I changed a lot because of her.

That was 9 years ago. (time really does fly…)

My mother used to give Kale to us all the time (still do), because she plants a whole bunch of them in her garden. The homegrown organic type too.

The way I used to cook them is to either stir fry, blanch (more like boil) or worst, steam. I even cook the stems as well. That was wrong, very wrong…

Kale actually tastes quite bitter, especially the stem part (it is stubbornly tough so I used to blanch the hell out of it!). My wife never liked it so we involuntarily discarded quite a lot of them. We just weren’t getting though them quick enough before our next shipment arrived.

So yup, I was wasting A LOT of them goodness. (Sorry Mom!)

I wasn’t good with flavor combinations either, so no matter how hard I tried to cover kale’s distinctive taste by using a different variety of store bought sauces and gravy (can you imagine?). It just never worked.

I still remember having so much Kale in my fridge that one day, I decided to make baby food out of it. Yes, that was very ambitious of me, given my expert foodie background (yeah right..), but I did it anyway.

So yes, my poor baby daughter became my lab rat and tasted my very first blend of “homemade baby food” using:

• Fresh bananas (peeled)
• Kale (cooked)
• Carrots (cooked)
• Baby formula powder (I know, but it was good for her…)

Placed them all in a blender, added a little warm water, turned it on and done. Genius!

And I will never forget her face expression…

…when I attempted to feed her that second bite.

Yup, she broke my heart.

(By the way, that image above is not my daughter, although she had a very similar reaction.)

Anyway, so fast forward a few years. (Did I say 9 years? Damn!)

I have learned so much about “how to use different types of ingredients”, including kale. More importantly, I’ve learnt respect them, compliment them, a lot!

There are many different ways to eat kale and one of the best way to do so is to make a salad out of it. By doing so, you’re not losing any of it’s nutrients, vitamins, minerals and all the other goodies that comes with this dark leafy green.

It’s not rocket science…really.

Now before I begin, I just wanted to say that I have seen many kale salad recipes with apples, and maybe apple with avocado, or pear, grapes, pecan, walnuts, bacon and so on…

But interestingly, I have never seen anyone putting mangoes into a kale and apple salad?

It was weird because I eat this all the time. My families loved it, all my friends enjoyed it, so I just don’t understand why?? I mean, I was only searching around online to find some different ideas and variations, but there was none!

Like…come on, raw kale salads are not even that hard to make, at least mine wasn’t. As a matter of fact, my recipe here is super quick, easy and absolutely delicious.

And when you tossed everything together with my lemon garlic dressing…YUM!

Check it out.

So that’s it for this easy salad recipe.

It is very healthy because not only are you getting all the nutrition from the dark greens (fresh raw kale leaves), the apple, the mango, but you’re also absorbing all the health benefits from the mixed seeds (natural protein), which your body wouldn’t be getting otherwise.

I find them to be a great compliment to the salad as it provided an extra layer of crunchiness and texture to the overall dish. And if you happened to get the same brand of paleo mix as the one I got from aldi, then you’re absorbing the additional goodness from the almonds flakes too.

A perfect balanced meal for a quick, healthy and delicious lunch in summer.

So give it a go!

And please don’t forget to LIKE or SHARE this wonderful apple, mango and kale salad recipe with other people. You’re really only doing them a favour in terms of their health.

Until next time…this is “I Love My Tongue!”

Chao!