Stir up Sunday

Stir up Sunday

Winter Kale

Winter Kale

A close descendent of wild cabbage, kale has been cultivated since at least the fourth century BC when it was grown in Greece and Italy and probably beyond.  In Europe it was one of the most common vegetables until the Middle Ages; easy to grow, highly nutritious and versatile and useful for feeding the animals too.  It’s now coming back into fashion, with varieties such as cavolo nero and red Russian gracing the tables of some of our top restaurants, prized for their good looks as well as their flavour. 

Kale is a vegetable that loves the cold, tasting sweeter after a frost, and it positively thrives throughout the winter, growing on where wimpier cabbages fail.  For this reason it has always been highly regarded in Northern Europe. In Scotland the word kail was a generic term for dinner in the 19th Century and in North West Germany social clubs take kale tours during the winter, visiting country inns to eat platefuls of the vegetable washed down with schnapps!

With high levels of vitamins C, A, E and K, minerals calcium, potassium and iron and phytochemicals thought to have anti-cancer properties, you’d have to have a very good reason NOT to eat it!

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