Good Press

I bought a mess of kale. It was in the middle of butter-white flour-sugar season and I felt compelled to do something really healthy for myself and my family. I remembered having a spicy kale dish with peanut butter sauce two autumns ago at a potluck celebrating eating foods grown within 50 miles. Going against that principle, regretfully, I bought a 1-pound plastic bag of prewashed and chopped kale greens. Wouldn't you know, when I got home, I couldn't find my cookbook with the recipe in it? Searching for one like it, I found two recipes for other kinds of dishes that I tried this week and used up the kale. I say "I tried" when I should say "My husband made them." I've been sick with the respiratory crud that seems to have everyone down. No better time than to eat nutrient-rich leafy greens, and in hot soup, too! Thanks for picking up the slack, honey! A champion of local foods shared the recipes with the newspaper for which I used to work. Susan Sauter

It was not without good reason I neglected my food blog during the biggest food holidays of the year: I was wrapping my full-time commitments to my employer. Now that I am happily self-employed, I resolve to update more regularly. Here is the blog I have posted elsewhere concerning the major change I made at the end of 2007. The African impala can jump up to 10 feet in the air, but a wall only 3 feet tall is needed to keep it confined to a wildlife preserve. An impala won't jump when it can't see where its feet will land. I don't wanna be an impala. Those of you who know I have struggled to make a life-changing decision this fall are no doubt curious how it turned out. I resigned my full-time newspaper job effective Dec. 21. My reasons are personal, financial (specifically rising gasoline prices), spiritual and professional. I am guilty of getting into a comfortable rut, of having tunnelvision. But since this summer, I've grown up, and I've done a personal inventory