I just back from a long vacation in Hawaii. Sigh. It was 80 and sunny everyday there and cloudy and 15 degrees here. All I keep thinking is “Wait, why did I come home!?”

On our vacation we stayed at a condo, which is ideal for healthy eating while on vacation. Whenever my boyfriend and I go on vacation we always seem to come back with some amazing dish we picked up while away. I was gone for 3 weeks and the dish we discovered this time was the kale salad. Now I have always loved kale. Kale chips, sauteed kale, you name it. But I never really caught on to eating kale raw in a salad until this last month. Holy cow, I’m so sad I’ve been missing this all this time!

At first we tried to be real particular and only put toppings on that we thought went together, like blue cheese, pears, and pecans. Or goat cheese, dried cherries and strawberries. But you know what? It really doesn’t even matter what combination of toppings you use.

In fact, the more toppings you put on it the better it is. Seriously, you cannot put enough different stuff on this salad.

However, that is not to say there aren’t a few tricks to the trade. Here are a couple things I learned about making the best kale salad ever:

1. Don’t eat the stalks. Simply rip the leaves off the stalks and throw the stalks away.

2. Prepare the kale 15 minutes before you are ready to eat. To prepare take the ripped off leaves and scrunch them all up in your hands really well.  Kale is a tough leaf and by scrunching up the leaves it makes it a bit softer and tastier. You can’t be too rough with them!

3. After scrunching up the kale, put the dressing only on and mix it all up and let it sit for 10 minutes by itself with just the dressing on it.

4. Finally, after it has sat add on all your toppings and enjoy!

Some great topping ideas:

• Radishes
• Honeycrisp Apples
• Pears
• Strawberries
• Dried Cherries
• Dried Mango
• Craisins
• Goat Cheese
• Blue Cheese
• Pecans
• Macadamia Nuts
• Cashews

As for the dressing, we found a new favorite in Hawaii, Galeos Miso, Ginger and Wasabi Dressing. We liked it so much, I bought a case of it from the Galeo website and had it shipped to our house. 🙂 If you can’t find this anywhere, a nice Honey Balsamic would also be spectacular.

Here is a picture of one of my creations from my vacation. As you can see it has a LOT of stuff on it: