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Simply Sweet Potato, Kale, Chicken Skillet


The garden while not producing a bumper crop of green beans, tomatoes, okra, spinach, or zucchini, the chard and mustard greens are growing faster than can be eaten.  What is not being eaten fresh has been frozen for future usage.  Yes, mustard greens.  At this table mustard greens, chard, kale, and spinach are used interchangeably.  Scouring the food sources, one quickly realizes other tables do not agree with this methodology.  Spinach is for this, chard is for that, kale is for health conscience, and greens are for the desperate. Sad.

Eaters today are limiting their creative cooking by sticking to the safe veggies such as baby spinach, red/yellow/orange bell peppers, iceberg lettuce, and roma tomatoes.  There is a world of vegetables to cook, just give them a try.  Cabbage, brussel sprouts, pablano peppers, butternut squash, endive, arugula.  Will the first recipe be the best cooking method for that particular vegetable, maybe not.  But try again.  The biggest key to success, an open mind!  

Start simple and easy.  Review the vegetable pairing method, a sweet with a bitter, a heat with a fat. Don't get overwhelmed, start with the basics. Can't find a recipe, make one from the basis of another.  Cheesy Chicken, Kale, and Sweet Potato Skillet Meal sounds good but has too many ingredients, modified it.

Modifications Made:
Ingredients: Chicken breast, sweet potato, kale, garlic, sweet yellow onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, oil, chicken stock
Instructions: In large skillet, brown diced chicken breasts in oil.  Remove chicken, brown onion.  Return chicken add garlic.  Mix and cook for a minute or two.  Add sweet potatoes, chopped kale, half cup of chicken stock, salt and pepper to taste, and a dash (a dash!) of nutmeg.  Cover and cook until potatoes are done.  Check against burning chicken, adding more stock or water if needed.

Scaled for Likability: Great
Bitter garlic and sweet onions, bitter chard and sweet potatoes, tender, moist chicken bites to bring it all together.  This meal was perfect!  What's better it that it would have been perfect even without the chicken as a completely vegetarian meal.  If the potatoes were left a little more on the firm side, this meal would have been great as leftovers, too.  Not that there was any leftovers to be had.

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