Brain Food: Hurray for Kale!

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What happens when you mix culinarily curious kids with farm-fresh kale, friendly experts, fun facts and an open invitation to shake up their imaginations (and taste buds)?

To find out, IACP Kids-in-the-Kitchen teamed up with the energetic kids at Washington D.C.'s School Without Walls and the amazing experts at Brain-Food – a nonpofit youth development organization dedicated to using food as a tool to build lifeskills and encourage happy, healthy living.

We learned that that kale is one of those of those super-cool green superfoods that everyone would be smart to try. Its bright green leaves are packed with Vitamins A, C and K (which makes sense: it's KALE, right?). They're also a good source of beta-carotene, lutein, calcium, potassium, fiber – and lots of other healthy stuff.

Of course, the big question for a lot of young might-be kale eaters was: what does it TASTE like? Because it's a lot easier to get excited about eating good-for-you foods that actually taste good to you.

Our discussion made it clear that kids are more enthusiastic about trying a new food when they get to prepare it themselves, so we all gathered around a big table for a true hands-on experience.

Our quest: to make a yummy, healthy kale salad that everyone would want to devour right now – and remember how to make so we could share with our families and friends.

We all took turns shaking up the dressing, then put on some gloves so we could massage all that savory goodness deep into the leaves, softening them up a bit to make them the perfect texture for happy crunching.

It turns out that, in addition to making kale taste amazing, our olive oil dressing had just the right amount of fat needed to make the nutrients in the greens more bioavailable (easy for our bodies to absorb). Plus, getting to rub and touch and toss the salad made it seem to truly belong to everyone who helped make it. When it came time to dish up the salad, we all agreed that it really had the magic touch!

If you'd like to try making some yourself, you'll find Brain-Food's recipe below. Hail to the kale!