I’m sitting in a chai tea cafe in Portland, drinking soy pumpkin spice chai from a pottery mug, enjoying this little corner spot overlooking the cool downtown 23rd Street. I am rested after four full days here. Slept a lot. Drank a lot of tea and sat by their fireplace, leaving my phone in my bedroom and decompressing from a really busy life in Kansas City. I recommend little vacations. They can be life-changing.
I love greens. Greens like kale, chard, spinach and turnip greens… There’s so much you can do with kale, did you know that? I might not have said that till I entered this personal kale revolution I’m in, after discovering (from my friend Anna Walker) something called ‘massaged kale’. Yep – fresh, cut up kale, massaged with a little salt by your little fingers for two minutes, and it transforms into an utterly revolutionary eatable green. My Portland friend Shayle went to culinary school, never hearing about massaged kale till I introduced it to her, and she’s addicted too now. That’s when you know it’s good.
Shayle cooks three square meals a day for her family. That’s part of the reason why it’s so wonderful to vacation with them, though Shayle is much, much more than her food. But, for the sake of this blog entry about greens and tea in Portland, I will write about her food. Today for lunch, she sauteed some kale and turnip greens in beef broth, loads of garlic, onions and a little salt. It was phenomenal! I mean it. Every bite. I am still thinking about it a few hours later. And, she made green smoothies for us the other day, packed with chard and parsley and a little fruit. I’ll never have a non-green smoothie again.
During my vacation in Portland, I’ve also learned from Shayle that hummus is much better for you when made with 2/3 lima beans and 1/3 chickpeas, which I never would have known, but this will change my hummus-making forever. Sadly, my beloved chickpeas have actually very little protein. We’ve also discovered this weekend (thanks, Wikipedia) that though turnips look unassuming, they are actually very good for you (and with only 1/3 the calories of potatoes!). And, carrot tops are edible unless you’re allergic to them like one might be to peanuts, in which case they could kill you. (“Carrot top” used to be a nickname my dad called me growing up, though he meant the carrot itself, which matched my hair color, rather than the green tops!) I love learning things like this.
I love tea, too. I’m not too much of an herbal tea girl, though, unless it’s rooibos or Bengal spice or something I can add milk to. I just like full-bodied teas that are substantial – like good ole English black teas. Something like PG Tips. That’s my favorite. Nothing like a big mug of PG Tips first thing in the morning, with my Bible and journal…
Portland has been good to me. God has been good to me in Portland.
