Harvest Monday: Kale for the Freezer

Last year I discovered "Kale Pizza"- and boy do I love it!!  I have posted about it once or twice in the past, but basically I saute up some chopped kale with homemade onion preserves (click for a recipe link in older post), toss it on a thin oiled pizza crust, generously top it with crumbled feta and grill.  Scrumptious!  My favorite way to do kale by far -  though in my opinion it is the jam that makes the whole thing come together.

The problem is it has been a seasonal recipe for me so far, I just never was into buying kale at the grocer's.  So today I did a decent sized harvest to freeze for Winter.  Cool right?  Why didn't I do this last year???  It started with over a pound and a half of Red Russian Kale and a handful of Hon Tsai Tai leaves thrown (cause they were there).

The greens were rinsed, partially stemmed (I actually prefer to leave most of them intact, we like the crunch they provide), chopped, and blanched for 2 minutes before being plunged in an ice bath and spun dry.  Then I laid out the kale on a piece of parchment paper and blotted them with paper towels to get as much moisture off as I could.

Next I rolled up, and cut the paper in half before laying it in a freezer bag......

And there you have it, Harvest Monday (done on Sunday), to be enjoyed when fresh greens will be hard to come by in the home garden.  I ended with 6 sections of parchment which will make either 6 individual, or 3 large pizzas if I am figuring it correctly.  Now I better go check my onion preserves stash, I think it may be time for a new batch!