If you answered popcorn (or nothing), you would be wrong. Utterly, absolutely, WRONG.

It's Kale Chips! The recipe is so ridiculously simple that even I could have made it 4 years back, but didn't.



To make up for that lamentable lapse, I just made and devoured a kilo of kale chips in addition to the kale salad I had earlier. If you see a greenish looking person scuttling about tomorrow, its probably a safe bet to assume that they are not from Ireland.

If you don't put on your coats and boots, rush to the nearest kale selling-store (or your fridge, if you are already a kale-eating monster), make these chips RIGHT NOW, you will have a sad potato-chip-filled or popcorn-filled Friday evening, suckers.

Assuming you now have that kale in hand, wash it, strip the leaves from the stalks, tear the leaves into BIG chip sized pieces, dry it, spin it down, toss in some olive oil, juice from a quarter lemon and a liberal sprinkle of salt. Dry the leaves at around 90 Degree C (yeah, yeah, F it -> ) for 20 minutes or till the leaves are a dessicated dark earthy green.

DO NOT burn them. Do not raise the temperature. The idea is to dry them, not roast them. They taste THAT much better when dried (than roasted). Watch carefully around the 20-30 minute mark. Just drag a chair in front of your oven door and keep staring at the kale. They will transform into junk food craving gold.

I can't quite explain how they taste, they are bizarrely awesome and extremely addictive. If I keep going at this rate, I might just beat out Pizza Hut in Kale consumption.

Me: (to very happy-looking matronly but slightly intimidating tall Latino (HLMSITL) woman picking out the last piece of odd-looking squash that I wanted to try) Ah, so you like that squash?

HLMSITL woman: (waving the rather sizeable squash about as if it were made of sponge) I do. VERY much.

Me: How, would you say, is it different from Acorn squash or Butternut squash?

HLMSITL woman: Hmm... its firm.

Me: You mean firmer than butternut?

HLMSITL woman: Yes, and also (pointing to the acorn squash) this one.

Me: (persisting in the hope that she may realize that I have never tried it and maybe, just maybe give it away) Firm in what way? More fibrous?

HLMSITL woman: No, firm as in even after cooking you feel like it could get caught in your throat and choke you to death while eating it. (Makes a choking gesture at her neck with both hands and rolls eyes around, manages to look rather alarmingly like she is actually choking.) Like THAT. And I LOVE that, you know?

Me (to myself): Nopes, I definitely don't know.

Me (to HLMSITL woman): Wow. How fascinating! *Smile Smile. Edge away*

You just can't deny it [1-5].

---

References:
1. (e:theecarey,50736)
2. (e:theecarey,50766)
3. (e:theecarey,49743)
4. (e:theecarey,45899)
5. (e:theecarey,35925)

My laptop battery goes from 96% "discharging" to 5% "Critical Battery Level, Shutting down NOW" in 20 minutes flat. This is with the monitor off and on lowest power consumption settings. It never reaches 100% charge, according to the battery monitor. I always see it hovering around 95%. Worse, it takes just 20 minutes to charge to 95% .The laptop and battery are just around 1.5 years old. :/

I guess I am partially to blame for this poor battery performance because I really should have run the battery through the charge-discharge cycle all this time, instead of running it from the AC outlet power most of the time.

Maybe Sanyo makes trash batteries. Who knows... Mine is a
LION NS2P3SZNJ5WR

I have learnt my bitter battery lesson in time for my next Chrome OS powered netbook - which hopefully is just round the corner.

(e:himay), "Ack!"? Really? Think again! ;-)