Ok, kale, you win. I like you.

I'll admit it, I jumped on the 'superfood' bandwagon with kale.

I think my turning point was a Kale Caesar Salad at our Thursday night bar. OMG delicious. I replicated that for like two weeks straight for lunch, then got sick of it. But I love cooking with kale. I add it to my chicken soup. I braise it with pancetta. I sauté it with garlic.

In fact, kale was my vegetable at our Thanksgiving table last year (much to the chagrin of my ninety-plus grandfather and grandmother. "What is that? Kale? Never heard of it.")

So when after what seems like two straight weeks of eating – and eating and eating – Mr. KK requested a salad for dinner tonight, I immediately thought of kale. (I wasn't going to make just a plain salad. That's not dinner.)

Max and I bundled up and ventured out to the grocery store, where I could have sworn he was going to be a teenager before we got back to the car. The grocery store was packed at 2:30pm on a Wednesday. Don't people work??? We can't ALL be on maternity leave!

Tonight I put together a Kale Salad with Butternut Squash, Cranberries and Pepitas. You can find the recipe here.

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The recipe is easy and delicious. The colors of the green in the kale and the orange in the butternut squash is beautiful.

I think my favorite part of the recipe was massaging the kale. I don't even get massages. This super food is WAY high maintenance.

I felt so good about our very light and healthy salad for dinner, that I pre-gamed the dinner event with a nice glass of wine and some manchego. (Perhaps I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to watching what I eat?)

In other news, NaBloPoMo is over, and I'm proud to say that I did it. It was tough to find the time – and material – to write each and every day. I can't tell you how many nights we'd clean up the dishes, fill the dishwasher, give Max a bath and get him to bed and I'd finally sit on the couch at 10:30pm and I would think, "Aw, crap! I have to write my blog post!" (I said this with love, though, I promise).

Max is growing like crazy. Every day he makes a new sound or a new funny face. It's hard to believe he'll be two months this Friday! It's also hard to believe that my leave is more than half over (but we won't talk about that).

Here's a dose of cuteness for the day. We are a very outfitted house over here in the giraffe department.

Speaking of giraffes, does anyone know what sound they make? Because a giraffe showed up during my rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" the other night (we were many verses in, and the old farmer has a VERY progressive farm), and I was stumped for a noise.