Ahead of the New York Times?

Perhaps you are on the edge of your seat, wondering if I ever got around to adding that forgotten kale to the soup I made last week. Or perhaps you don't have any recollection of the event I mention. In any case, the next day, I did put the kale into the soup and it honestly made the pretty good soup downright delicious.

Little did I know I was just ahead of some kind of trend; the next day this article appeared in the New York Times. Next time I buy kale I want to make this. But that may not be until next week at the earliest, because I finally noticed this challenge and I want to give it a try. In some ways I feel like I've already done it because the last time I went for a "big shop" was last Sunday the 1st. But in the interval, we went to Costco on Saturday the 7th and I picked up some fruit and milk. Guess I'll try to go until at least this Saturday without another trip to the market, though my friend "ordered" a birthday cake from me and I might have to swing in for a couple of ingredients I don't have. But if that's not for family meals then I guess it's not really cheating, right?!

There is a point to all this, which is: there were a few more leaves of kale, left from the incident mentioned above and found in the fridge tonight. Since I read the article and found that kale is such a wonder food, I thought I'd like to try and get my kids to eat it. I chopped it pretty finely and added it to

*macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and peas...and kale!

I wanted to try it as a stir fry, so I put the rest of it together with some mushrooms, garlic, salt and pepper. I think I was over zealous with the garlic, though. It was too much, even for me. I mean, I still ate it; it tasted fine when I mixed it with my macaroni and cheese. But note to self: when stir frying veggies for one, two giant cloves of garlic are overkill.

One more thing "left over" from last week is egg whites. Have I mentioned this already, or just thought about it to myself? You'll recall that I made two large cakes last week for Koji's birthday party. Those cakes were all-yolk cakes, but I hated to throw away perfectly good whites, which means that some two dozen egg whites have been swimming in various small containers in the fridge ever since.

Finally tonight I got around to making these. Please don't try this at home unless you have a stand mixer! But if you do, please get to cracking some eggs... I need some more meringue cookie fans that I can start an obsession club with! One note about baking: if you follow these instructions exactly, the cookies will likely come out snow white and still a bit tacky. I like mine dried out and crunchy (which is weird because in my book, all other cookies worth eating are chewy and on the soft side), so I've found the best way to achieve that result is to bake as directed, then turn up the oven to 300 or so for another half an hour. After that, depending on how dry you're aiming at, you can remove the cookies from the oven, or turn off the oven and leave them in overnight. Some of the best meringue cookies I've ever made were the ones I accidentally left in the oven after turning off...then rediscovered two days later!