Dehydrated kale "chips" recipe

The final product - Krispy Kale Chips! Plus some green juice - for the juice I used 1 head of romaine, 1/2 cup kale plus the kale stems I cut out for the chips, ~3/4 cup carrots, 2 apples, a lemon, 1" ginger and some broccoli stems (never mind the avocado in the background!). Copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp

Hello my vegelicious followers! It's day 4 here of my being vegan, and time for my next day's recipe. I originally planned to make the recipe from my friend Eileen for Kale Cashew Crispy snacks - even had the cashews in my grocery cart today, but then took them back out in an attempt to save money and use the ingredients I had on hand. In fact, I have so much food in my house, and one of my big plans is to use up some of the stuff here in recipes... sometimes that does require getting additional ingredients at the store, but... I do love to grocery shop! It's the only shopping I really allow myself on a regular basis. In fact, one of my plans for the New Year is to make a better grocery budget and stick to it. However, I have to get through this next article... due in less than 2 weeks. Ack. So anyway, I decided to go for the simple version of kale chips... salt, olive oil, and nutritional yeast! Specifically:

• 1 large bunch curly leaf kale
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon cold-pressed olive oil
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

I got this particular recipe from About.com's Raw Food Recipes site. My dehydrator does not have an adjustable temperature, and I do not know what it dehydrates at, and I know for raw food to be "raw" it has to be at less than some temp, which I don't know, but I'm not doing raw food diet so, whatevs. Did I mention that I love that word? ;) This ended up being so super simple, I am going to have these on hand ALL the time! I have a weakness for corn chips, which aren't necessarily unhealthy but they have highish fat and these kale chips are SUPER healthy (kale is a superfood!) and just have 1 Tablespoon oil in the whole batch. And that's not counting what gets evaporated (OK wait - I need a chemistry expert - the liquid component may evaporate, but does any of the fat content or does it just stick to the kale?!) I digress... Onto the pics.
First I soak the kale in my sink with a little veggie wash (or castille soap, depending on my mood). I bought organic, but you still need to wash them! Next I towel dry, and then cut out the central stem, which is tough (I reserve it for green juice though) and then chop. Put the chopped kale in a bowl. Put the olive oil, salt and yeast and then mix it around with your fingers. I think I used too much salt because mine were pretty salty. I like salt, too, but I'd probably reduce it a bit next time or even go without. If you don't ever use nutritional yeast, it makes stuff taste like it has Parmesan cheese on it. It's great on popcorn. My kids don't like it, but I love it. I'm going to test out the kale chips on them and will report back. My dehydrator has four trays and you stack them. One bunch of kale fit on two trays. I didn't know how long it would take to dry, because the About.com recipe says 2 hours, and another site with another recipe said like 10-12 hours! They must have a very low-temp dehydrator, I suspect, because mine were done and crispy crunchy within a couple hours. In fact, some were done within an hour.
They shrink up quite a bit. I am so in love with these!! They are soooo delish!! And so easy to make. Try them sometime! I think I'm going to make people Kale chips as Christmas gifts next year. Back to work for me!