Cashew Kale Chips and Can’t I Just Use The Old Photo????

Warning: The blog post you are about to read has vain and superficial content:

Hello everyone and especially that special New Yorker:

Dear twenty-something-year-old-man of possibly Arab or Hispanic descent,

Thank you so much for leaning toward me today on W. 38th street, looking into my eyes and saying,

“Niiiiiiiice….”

It really made my day.

Love,
Alma

You see, today I had to rush into the City to get a passport made for an upcoming trip. I went to Rush Passport (www.rushpassport.com). Sadly , my old passport expired in 2007. Even more sad is the fact that the last passport photo was taken in 1997-14 years ago.

I looked really good in the photo, I ain’t gonna lie. I had long curly hair, unlined skin and a general ease and carefree-ness about me. Even though I have rarely needed to whip out that passport in the last few years, it was always reassuring to see my youthful face in that photo. It had only just expired so I liked to think that I still looked like that 14 years later.

My new Passport photo will last the next 10 years. What pressure! I toyed with wearing eye make up which I never do. I teased the passport photo guy that he’d better make me look good and he laughed.

I wasn’t kidding. He was going to be in a LOT of trouble if I looked old and crappy so he’d better have a lot of experience. I wanted the right angle.

It was over in a polaroid instant. I only got one shot.

While I waited for the photo I thought about a photo exhibit I saw in a magazine a decade or so ago. A photographer photographed his wife ever day on the same day for over 20 years. She looked the same for so many of the early shots and then POOF! One year she looked old and it when down hill from there.

Oh, Mr. Passport photographer, please make me look young so I can be like an old Bette Davis in 9 years and look at my beautiful 2011 self! Just one awesome picture, Photo God of the world, and I promise not to complain about how I look in any photo ever again……

They handed me the photo. Not great. Although I thought I was having a good hair day, the photo came out with a pretty middle aged looking do. If only I had gotten a perky looking haircut yesterday! Damn!

As I walked back to Port Authority, the young fellow I told you about gave me my catcall.

“Niiiiiice…”

Maybe I don’t look so old after all….

Oh, well. At least I still feel young and I can still rock some of my low rise jeans. And at least I made dehydrated kale chips with a tasty coating last night that were nice and dehydrated by the time I got home. All in all a pretty good day.

Please know that in our kitchens, unlike in the Passport office, we always get a second chance to work on on our health. Every day is a new opportunity to start living clean. Join me and enjoy the Kale chips-they are dry and crinkly like me. Also, once you feel so good from the kale, you won’t need strangers to make you feel good 🙂

Cashew Kale Chips:
Ingredients:
2 large bunches of curly, green kale, washed, large stems removed, torn into bite size pieces

COATING:
1 cup raw cashews, can also try with other nuts
3/4-1 cup cilantro, washed
juice of 1 lemon
2 TBS agave (optional-can use less)
1 TBS nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp salt

Put coating ingredients in a powerful blender or Food processor (even a mortar and pestle will do). Blend until smooth. Using your hands, massage coating onto kale pieces getting it all over the kale.

In a dehydrator:
Put on dehydrator sheets (don’t worry about flattening them, they’re better bunched up) and dehydrate at 115 degrees overnight or until coating is dry.

In the oven:
Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet in one layer and bake at 300 degrees until dry. Keep flipping them until
are dry, start checking at 10 minutes.