Red Russian Kale Pizza

We had a full day, including a nice visit to the nearby Carrboro Farmer's Market and, surprisingly, three grocery stores, starting with Weaver Street Market, just a few blocks away. My wife was in the mood for a bagel, so we stopped at Bruegger's Bagels; it's in the same mall as Trader Joe's, so we picked just a few things up from there, as well. On to Whole Foods Market for the bulk of our shopping!



I ended up with so many items that it was difficult to fit it all in my refrigerator! I had purchased some Red Russian Kale at the farmer's market and decided that it just wouldn't fit in the refrigerator, so it would be cooked! I also had brought home a twin pack of Vicolo Pizza organic cornmeal crust pizza shells, and came up with the idea of making a kind of pizza!

I stripped the kale leaves off the stems, composting the stems and roughly hand shredding the leaves into one-inch or so pieces. Instead of blanching the kale leaves as I've done in the past, I simply sauteed half of a red onion cut into medium (maybe 1/4" or slightly larger) half moons, then added a Field Roast Grain Meat Company apple-sage artisanal sausage that I had cut into eighths. A few minutes later, I added the kale leaves; within a minute or two the leaves turned a darker green, at which point I took the sausage pieces out and mixed in a little salt.

I put the kale-onion mixture into two pizza pie shells, then added the sausage, as well as red bell pepper slices and some marinated artichoke hearts. I baked the pizza and served it with (prepared from frozen) sweet potato fries.

It was a good dinner in front of a very nice evening. My wife and I enjoyed the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company (especially their opening and closing very contemporary pieces, Crucible and Tensile Involvement) and Trisha Brown Dance Company at ADF, then enjoyed some live music at the smoke-free Broad Street Cafe. There, we saw The McCauliffe Brothers Band, two brothers with a drummer performing reasonably good lyrical rock; and Oscar Begat, an interesting family band with a father, his two sons and a daughter, and two other band members playing folks rock.

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Yesterday, I had hoped to catch some live music downtown, and we rushed to pick up some picnic food at Whole Foods Market; we ended up just eating at the store and not getting to the music - the hot bar was unremarkable (I had two tacos and a variety of sides). I went on to see (for the second time - great film!) Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) outdoors at the NC Museum of Art - I so love these art museum outdoor films around each summer.


On Thursday, it was my wife's birthday! After my photography class, I met my parents and her, and treated all to some very good food at Sitar India Palace. In fact, I had the best uttapam that I can recall ever having (including a few times I made my own)!