Dashboard Cheesy Kale Chips

You know...for a girl without central air in her house, you'd think I'd dread the hot and hazy Baltimore days. I don't enjoy sweating. I don't enjoy seeing my hair frizz. And I definitely don't enjoy the feeling of sweat beads rolling down the side of my face. EWWW.

But I love it when the temp goes above 95 degrees because it's actually hot enough to bake something in my car. If you're going to get scorched, you might as well get a tasty treat out of it, right?

I've made cookies and fruit roll ups in my car, but I decided to go the healthy route: kale chips. I know. Kale is ridiculously anti-climactic compared to cookies and fruit roll ups, but trust me...these things are addicting. Jack rolled his eyes, crinkled his nose, and lamented the kale and eggs his wife "makes" him eat for breakfast. But after he ate one, he kept reaching for more and said they taste like cheese popcorn. WIN!

Here's the thing - the ingredients to make the Cheesy Kale Chips are a bit untraditional. The really "weird" ingredient is nutritional yeast (not to be confused with Brewer's Yeast). I picked everything up at my local health food store, and if I were you, I'd walk in the door of the health food store, march myself up to a one of the clerks, show them the list of ingredients and say, "Let's go on a scavenger hunt!" Seriously, don't stress yourself out trying to find it. They'll know exactly where to look. Nutritional yeast is worth finding because it gives the kale the "cheesy" flavor. Per tablespoon, nutritional yeast has 130% of your daily vitamin B-12, 4 grams of fiber, 8 grams of protein, and 60% of your daily folic acid! All in ONE TABLESPOON! It's seriously delicious stuff that you'd never know is super healthy for you too.

Jack is hoarding the cheesy kale chips!

Cheesy Kale Chips
Recipe lightly adapted from Pride & Vegudice

1 bunch curly kale
1 cup cashews (raw, not roasted or salted)
1 red bell pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon sea salt

Place the cashews in a medium sized bowl and cover with water. Let the cashews soak for a minimum of 3 hours. This will soften the cashews and make them easier to blend. You can even do this step the night before, if you'd like, and let the cashews soak while you sleep.

Remove the tough, woody stems from the kale leaves and tear them into bite-sized pieces. Thoroughly wash and dry the kale (a salad spinner is great for this) and drop the pieces into the biggest bowl you have. Kale seems to expand.

In a food processor, drop the garlic cloves through the shoot while the food processor is running. When the garlic is chopped, stop the food processor, add everything but the kale, and process until everything is smooth. It should look like a really thick salad dressing.

In a large bowl, toss the "cheese sauce" and kale until the kale is thoroughly coated. Try not eat it straight from the bowl like I did. Seriously...I could have eaten the whole bowl just like that.

Line two large cookie sheets with foil or parchment paper (I only brought one with me to work). Arrange the kale pieces on the cookie sheets so there's still a little space in between them. At this point, you can either pop these in an oven at 200 degrees for around 45 minutes... or you can bake them in your car :-).

Make sure it's 95 degrees or hotter outside and your car is parked in full sun. Drape a bath towel over the dashboard so you don't accidentally melt it. Place the cookie sheets on the dashboard, make sure you don't need anything from your car for the next few hours, shut the door, admire your kale chips, and then walk away. The heat from sun will turn your car into an oven and the kale chips will dry out. They should be completely dried in 2-3 hours. Try not to eat them all... like Jack & me.

Dashboard Fruit Roll Ups

This morning, I got up and checked to see how hot it was going to be today.

No, it wasn't to see if it might be slightly cooler than the triple digit heat Baltimore has been experiencing the past few days.

I was checking to make sure it was going to be hot...hot enough for me to bake something in my car.

I've done the dashboard cookies and decided it's time to try something new and exciting.

It's time to make Fruit Roll Ups in my car.

FRUIT ROLL UPS.

Yes.

RAWRRRRRRR.

This is, like, one of the coolest days ever, because it worked.

IT WORKED!!!!!

Seriously, like, these things taste like the Fruit Roll Ups my mom would get my brothers and me as snacks when we were kids. I'd take mine completely out of the package, wrap it around my index finger, and gnaw away at that roll up on my finger. I have no idea why. It's just how I did it.

I did a little searching on the internet to see if anyone else had the same idea that I had and apparently there are more crazy people out there other than me.

Here are a couple of sites that I used for inspiration:

Planet Green
iPrepared
This Homemade Life

None of them talked about doing it in the car, but I figure if a dehydrator is around 150 degrees, my car is at least that or more when it's in full sun. I have baked cookies in my car before, so I know that it works.

I had some strawberries that were uber ripe, and I figured that was a good place to start. In a blender, I pureed

• 3 cups strawberries
• 3 Tbls honey
• 1 tsp lime juice

I made sure there were no lumps or bumps - the strawberries were completely pureed.

I lined a large, non-rimmed cookie sheet pan with parchment paper.

I set a fine mesh sieve in the middle of the sheet pan and poured the strawberry puree into the sieve to strain any seeds that didn't get pulverized.

I picked the sheet pan up and tilted it around to spread the puree verrrrrry thinly. Thin is the trick. If it's too thick, it will never dry in the car.

I grabbed a bath towel and trekked out to my car. I placed the bath towel over my passenger seat to protect the leather. Or pleather. I'm cheap-ish, so I'm sure my car has pleather.

I placed the cookie sheet on top of the towel, shut the door, blew a kiss to the cookie sheet, said a little prayer, and then waved to a neighbor who saw the whole exchange. It's OK. They're used to me doing things like this.

I did that around 11:30AM and I went out at 7:30PM. The edges were completely dry and fruit roll upee. The center was still fairly wet. I probably could have finished drying that part in the oven overnight, but in a house with only window AC units...not happening.

I cut around the non-dried parts, sampled too much just a few pieces and rolled up the rest in plastic wrap. Actually, we were out of plastic wrap, so I hacked some plastic baggies apart and made my own plastic wrap. Because that's just how I do.

So there you have it...the next car baking experiment.

What's next? Tomorrow I will be drying rosemary in my car.

RAWR.