Green Chips (Kale Chips)

This past weekend some friends brought over kale and Swiss chard from their garden. I haven't had much experience with either plant before, but I have come across recipes lately for kale chips and have had friends rave about them. I found that any heavy green can work for the chips (kale, chard, spinach, etc.). If you search for kale chips or chard chips recipes you'll find many of them out there (Weelicious is a good kid-focused recipe website). The basic ones go like this:

• Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
• Remove the stems from the kale (or whichever green you're using).
• Cut the kale into chip-sized pieces
• Lightly coat the leaves with oil (or spray them with a cooking spray). I used olive oil, pouring it over the leaves in a bowl. Not knowing how many leaves were in the bowl, I can't exactly tell you how much oil I used either. My advice is not too much (I over coated them, I felt)--just enough to lightly coat each leaf.
• Place the leaves on a cooking sheet in a single layer (if you're using parchment paper underneath you should be able to get by with even less oil).
• If desired, season (some recipes just skip seasoning as the chips will have a decent flavor as they are, others add a light amount of sea salt--you don't need much at all we found, we even tried some Parmesan cheese and garlic salt).
• Bake for about 15 minutes (watch closely--lighter leaves like chard will take less time). As soon as the leaf is crisp, they're done--don't let them get too brown.

We had a neighbor kid over when we tried these last night and they were a hit with all the kids. They really end up just like a chip. It's a good way to sneak a good dose of vitamins into them.