Recipe Recycle: Slow-Baked Beans with Kale

The New York Times posted a delicious-looking recipe last week for Slow-Baked Beans with Kale. Did you see the article?  Plan on giving it a try?

Kale is so IN right now, and by IN I mean I see it popping up everywhere in recipes lately.  It's certainly a staple around here, usually in the form of kale chips, but also in a pan of roasted vegetables or sauteed with some butternut squash.  I've bought it locally for as little as $1 per pound, and if you've ever seen a pound of kale, you understand how incredibly cheap that is.  More on kale in subsequent posts.

Back to the recipe.  Everything looks gluten free-friendly until we get down to the last ingredient: bread crumbs.  Oh, stupid, omnipresent bread crumbs.  If you happen to have a (usually quite pricey) store-bought g-f variety on hand, you can easily sub 1-for-1.  I never do, so I crumble up a slice of g-f bread and toast in the oven on 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, then mix in a little polenta (fine cornmeal) and copious amounts of dried parsley.  Polenta has the great quality of baking to a crusty topping on casseroles, and adding a few homemade bread crumbs to the mix creates a nice texture.

This recipe is going in the queue...I'll post the results when conquered.