Kale with Pechay Recipe

Life is simple. You're hungry, you eat. You want fresh and healthy food, cook at home. If you want a lot of options in your pantry, make sure you wake up early. This way, you can go to the market early before all the good stuff is gone.

I have been struggling with sleep these past few weeks. Nights are long, and the hours of the day are never enough to finish all my chores. To compensate, I sneak into the night to complete them. And so, I sleep late, then I will wake up the following morning lacking rest. Our body could only take so much so there will be days when it will force us to get the rest we terribly need.

I say this because the reason I came up with this recipe is rooted from my lack of sleep. I don't usually sleep in but I did on my market day. So I was left to work with what we have in the fridge.

Ingredients

• 3 cans of sardines
  I stock up on canned goods for our go-to bag. I panicked last January when Mt. Taal erupted and caused ashfall all over Luzon. My husband was in the US when that happened so I was left on my own with our kid to take care of. Hence our go-to bag 2.0. We have had it even before the incident. But then I realized (or I am just paranoid) that the supplies we have in the bag might not be enough. So I feed the stock every month. I get to also use the canned goods in times when I feel like slacking, or when I sleep in.

• Kale
  My husband felt like buying kale from an online store and just told me about it after the fact. I have never tasted kale before because I am one picky eater. I try to hide it from my kid because I know how hard it was for my mom to make me eat healthy food. So now, I needed to improvise a recipe for an ingredient I haven't tasted yet.

• Pechay

  I started homesteading again a couple of weeks ago. And the need to harvest has arisen. Good thing they're ready now. And I was so happy to see my pechay plants so leafy up in the rooftop. Yes, the harvest is good!
  To harvest pechay, you don't need to cut up the stem. So I just cut until the green leafy part. I don't like the white part anyway, it tastes kind of funny. I figured if I'm going to have to pretend I like kale, I should not have to add more unlikeable ingredients in this recipe.

• Okra
  This was an accidental ingredient. I just found two pieces of ladyfingers leftover from the pinakbet I cooked the other day. If I don't cook it soon, it will just dry out. So what're 2 pieces of okra anyway. Meh. Let's just add this to the experimental recipe.

• Tomato
  I like tomatoes on most of my recipes. It brings the umami.

• Onions

• Garlic

• Salt & pepper

• Cooking oil

Recipe

Everything I did was just as basic as it could be. The goal is to make the three kids at home eat the vegetables. And also make me eat kale without giving a negative reaction so the children won't replicate. I believe that children do what they see, not what they are told to.

So to start, I just sauteed the onion and garlic in a pan with a little bit of cooking oil. Next, I added the diced tomato next. Then poured in the sardines. When I sautee, I get a little bit carried away so I kind of crushed the fish in the process. It wasn't so bad. In fact, it made the dish look easier to eat. LOL.

Then comes next are the greens. I simply sliced the kale and pechay, nothing special about how to cut them. Just make sure they're bite-sized - not too big, but not too small.

I added a bit of water just to keep the sauce from drying out while I cook the greens. It doesn't need that much time cooking. All is done in less than twenty minutes.

The Verdict

I got to be honest, I was surprised I don't hate kale. I'm not yet sure if I like it, you can't really say you love something if you have tried it just once, right? The kids have the same reaction. It may be the tomato sauce in the sardine can, or maybe they're not as picky as I was when I was their age.

Now, I'll have to replenish the go-to bag, then try to get my sleeping habits fixed. As a mom, I can't afford to wake up early feeling like a zombie. Especially now that I have three kids under my care, all waiting for their homeschool teacher for their lessons every day.

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@romeskie is a full-time stay at home mom juggling homeschooling, crocheting, and homemaking. A Business Administration graduate with a major in Marketing who ended up in the contact center industry, on the frontlines, climbing her way up to Workforce Management where she found her passion in real-time analysis and management. A once self-proclaimed careerwoman who soon realized homemaking was her real calling. Her passion varies from reading, writing, photography, and most of all, crocheting.

Connect with her through her Facebook Page: The Leftie Crocheter and on Instagram. Feel free to subscribe to her Youtube Channel: The Leftie Crocheter

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