So right after my last post, I went outside, and cut about 40 big leaves off my kale plants–always from the lower part of the stems.  In between making and eating breakfast and washing dishes, I washed the leaves in groups of ten (by variety), and chopped them up, then washed them again in a salad spinner, which they filled up.

After doing the first batch, which used a lot of water, I figured out that I should save the wash water and bring it out to the garden, where I put it on the kale plants! Then I spinned the kale pieces to dry them, and sautéed them in our big cast iron pan.  I had to start with about half of the batch, then add the second half after the first had cooked down a bit.  I had green curly kale, red or purple curly kale and a double batch of lacinato kale. After sautéing, I cooled them in a bowl in the refrigerator before putting in bags. On the recommendation of other online gardeners, I used a straw to pull out all the air in the bags.

I still have plenty outside on the plants, but now I have these in the freezer.  Ten leaves only filled half a bag, at about 1/2 an inch thick.  That would be about three or four servings in our house, so this is a total of 12-16 servings.    This winter, I will see how they taste.