Pot Roast & Dried Kale

Today we made pot roast in our crock pot. My husband had bought a pound of roast beef yesterday, and it came with a container of au jus. So for lunch yesterday, we had French dip sandwiches. Today, we threw a beef roast, some onion, potatoes and carrots, and the leftover au jus in the crock pot and let it cook until mid-afternoon. It turned out great!

We also added some kale to our pot roast today. We have been receiving vegetables all season from a local farmer through a CSA program. The excitement of opening our box to see what we get is the best part of our Sunday afternoons. Except for the kale. For all but about two of the last 18 weeks or so, there has been a large bunch of kale topping off our produce selection. I have made kale chips (pretty good: try this recipe), we've put kale in every soup or stew we've made, we've sauteed it in stir fries, etc, etc. We're sick of it!

But we don't like to waste food. So a couple weeks ago, we took our kale selection and strung it up across the kitchen. We got the idea from a living history museum in Wisconsin we had visited a few weeks before. After about a week and a half, the kale was crisp-dry, and ready to be stored for awhile.  Today, we added it to our pot roast.  It got soft fairly quickly, and tasted a lot like fresh.  Since it worked so well, I think we'll be drying any other bunches we get over the next few weeks.