Interesting fact about Kale - its the only leafy green vegetable that contains quite a lot of fat. I don't eat it because it gives me raging heartburn/indigestion within 20 minutes, but I also don't eat it cos it tastes horrible - especially cavalo nero. But you might like it, you won't know till you try. Then there's chard, another thing I cannot tolerate, though I suspect, as with most of the leafy greens, I'm fine with baby leaves, preferably raw. Spinach, in comparison, is mild and slightly earthy, but whether you eat it or not probably depends on what you do with it - there's not much less appetising than a pile of spinach on a plate, oozing green water, as far as I'm concerned, but I eat loads of it - I use raw baby leaves in salads, in sandwiches, I stir it into lots things like a curry or a casserole or stir fries at the last minute before eating so its just about wilted, and regularly use up larger leaves in green smoothies that I make either in a blender or nutribullet, half cabbage or pak choi, half spinach with a couple of bits of pineapple to make it more pleasant.

If you like spring greens, cabbage,, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts, stick to those instead... but I think both kale and spinach can be grown as winter crops, as well as successional sowings from spring, though you need plenty of space to grow them in, like an allotment. Info in the link below

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/growfruitandveg_growingspinachchardandbeet1.shtml

Kale leaves need to be taken when small and used straight away. The stuff sold in Shops is old and unpleasant as you know. Far better to grow it yourself and use it at the right time.
Spinach is disgusting stuff in any shape or form.
If you need to eat green leaves then try,as said, growing cabbages, but take them when they are small. Used to be sold as Spring greens many years ago. (Coleworts is the old name for them).

I grow chard & perpetual spinach beet in Manchester easily. Perpetual Spinach is particularly easy as a mild flavoured cut & come again giving young leaves for salads or older leaves for wilting.
A lot of the leafy veg don't really want too much sun so as we move towards Autumn it'd be worth looking into some of the oriental varieties. & in early Spring mustard leaves are good producers that I find tasty

Thanks guys,I’m a bit lucky in a way as I have little sense of taste or smell, so I can now put up with things I never could. ( but very unlucky in that I can’t taste garlic ) so this lunchtime I ate sprouts for the first time since I was little and couldn’t taste it at all. YES ,
But the Dr keeps going on about kale and chard so I hope it’s similar with them. Might have to drench them in balsamic vinegar as I did with spinach recently.

I eat kale only when I have to as well, Hank. Owd Boggy is right in that the stuff sold in supermarkets is old. You could try Swiss Chard which I like as it's mild but I also like cavolo nero. It’s grown successfully in lots of allotments and gardens round here. The secret to any of them though is picking when young and cooking only lightly.

Sprouts I love as do all my family. Even my daughter in law, a confirmed sprout hater, has changed her mind and happily eats them now. Grow your own and pick the baby ones.

Thanks A, i’d forgotten about Swiss chard, if you say it’s milder, with a bit of luck I won’t be able to taste it. I’ll check it out and try to grow some if it’s as you say.

I'm mystified as to why your doctor is fixated on kale - yes, its higher in vitamins and antioxidants than other leafy greens, but only when its raw, once its cooked it loses a lot of those. Kale, is after all,just one of the brassicas, along with broccoli, cauliflower, brussels, cabbage, chard, bok choi (or pak choi) turnip and so on. I'm surprised, if he's anxious for you to consume more greenery, that he didn't mention microgreens - highly nutritious, packed full of antoxidants. I seem to recall you're a lettuce lover - switch to Romaine lettuce, they rank highly as the most nutritious salad leaf, followed by Cos, whereas iceberg is pretty poor. Watercress eaten raw is brilliant too... if you can stand it.

Strikes me, if you can't taste garlic any more, you probably won't taste any of the veggies mentioned above either!

American Land Cress is easy to grow.
Ikea does (& you can buy online) fairly compact, energy efficient setups for quickly growing microgreens with led lights

Never heard of miicrogreens, will check them out now. I Thank all of you guys for the info.

I forgot to mention - the second good thing about losing one’s sense of taste is that one’s sense of sweet things remains intact, and that dark chocolate - that I really like - Is good for me.

I have grown curly kale and used the leaves when they were still fairly young and found them not unpleasant. I have just bought some supermarket black kale to try so i can pass judgement on that later!(prepared for the worst after reading Owdboggy's comment though!) Suggest you try making smoothies with kale and apple and perhaps a small stick of celery. I'm going to try it in my juicer so may be able to report on that shortly!

Exactly how do you make the smoothies Sue ? I really don’t have a clue. They sound pretty good and I have kale,(yuk) apples and celery in my kitchen, wondering where to start.

I don't like things like boiled cabbage, but cabbage or collard greens thinly sliced and put into a soup are great. The Portuguese make terrific soups using collard greens, which are closely related to kale, but are not the same.

I've never seen collard greens in the UK - the closest we have is spring greens

Collard greens have a bad reputation as being something that hillbillies eat as a side dish to the squirrel entrée. There is also the problem that it gets translated into cabbage or kale. I came to Portugal and was served "couves". It was loosely translated as kale, but researched tracked it down to Collards. They use a special hand cranked machine that you feed the leaves into and it cuts them into strips only a few millimeters wide. It is best in soups instead of a wet mess on the side.

I;m curious as to what collard greens taste like, and why we don't have them here... do they taste similar to spring greens?

'wet mess on the side', oh boy, yea, horrible - can be a problem with many leafy greens if they're boiled too long and just served on their own. That's the way my mother used to cook and serve them, boiled for 20 minutes so you ended up with a greyish green oozing pile on the plate, which I point blank refused to eat, of course. Put me off leafy greens for years....

I find Collards to be a little stronger than the others, and it doesn't go to mush as quickly, so it will stand up to be cooked longer.
I did a search for Collard Greens UK, and there was an article from 2014 about some new trendy restaurant in London with a photo - the lump of unappetizing green you try to avoid, and the suggestion to disguise it in a smoothie.

Ah, so no better than spring greens... I only use spring greens in nutribullet smoothies,there does not seem to be a way of preparing them as a separate cooked veg that's tolerable to me. Same with cabbage,frankly - I have a lot of leafy green smoothies!

Hank - shredded cabbage added to soup (any kind really) comes out like noodles.

Thanks again all, sure I can make something from your suggestions. My lunch today was a huge plate of raw spinach and a piece of chicken and for tomorrow I have the dreaded kale which I’m going to try to cook.
Shredded cabbage ? Sounds quite possible.

You won't live forever but it'll just seem like it?😄

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/24/how-to-make-the-perfect-chana-masala

I do this recipe fairly often but chuck loads of frozen spinach in to bulk it up.
Another basic I do is to lightly boil some rice with turmeric to make it golden, fridge overnight. Then the next day in a a hot wok: onion, garlic, ginger. Shredded cabbage, spinach etc. Cumin, coriander, garam masala. Add turmeric rice & let it steam on a low heat

Looks interesting D, I have all the ingredients and might go for that one.
I steamed some spinach for lunch and even with the balsamic vinegar it was dreadful.
I bought kale and sprouts today, the sprouts I ate yesterday were ok but i’m still dreading the kale.

Quite a lot of the Indian type saag recipes use mustard seeds dropped into hot oil as a 'temper' I've noticed.
Maybe spinach with a fat would suit you better than vinegar? Americans like creamed spinach, there's the Greek spinach with feta or just wilted with a knob of butter & a good shake of pepper...

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls = Good Eats. Loads of recipes online. Find a good one and make you up some stuffed cabbage rolls. Yum!

Hi, I've never had kale, because when I was a child, the fields were full of it, it was grown as winter cattle fodder, they don't have a choice of what they get to eat, you do, eat what you like and forget kale, I'm sure you'll manage without it, you have so far, Derek.

Wilted spinach with nothing else is pretty ghastly- if you like cream cheese such as Philadelphia, gently cook some crushed garlic for a minute or so, chuck the spinach on top in the same pan and keep stirring till wilted, add a tablespoon of the cream cheese and plenty of black pepper, stir well. Or just use cream instead of the cream cheese... much, much tastier, also quick and easy. Good luck with the kale, let us know what you think - if you cook that and enjoy it, you're a better man than me...

Derek - we had people here from Australia years ago - when she saw me cooking corn cobs, she was horrified - its grown for the pigs to eat where she came from, so they never ate it...

Phily sounds good B, will go for that one too, but I dread the kale tomorrow. Will report back to all you good friends after my next blood tests.

Why on earth did I not think of it before. There are chicken,with chard/kale/ spinach curries. And I just lurve curry. I Am looking into them right now.

Try frying the kale in olive oil. First brown some garlic, and if you have it, a chili. Then thrown in the kale with some salt and pepper. Keep moving until it is slightly wilted.

Replace the chicken with chick peas and its even healthier, Hank... chickpea, potato and cauliflower curry using coconut milk and shredded coconut, with wilted spinach added at the end is delicious... Or leave the potatoes out and do rice instead

You may as well try KimChi.

No, not Kimchi. I had it in South Korea, back in 1986, and never again. Worse than sauerkraut.

And sauerkraut's bad enough...

No way! It's delicious plus Kimchi & Saurkraut are loaded with many health benefits. I tried the cauliflower, curry & coconut milk in Thailand. I nearly vomit. I dumped it in the river and chose to starve.

I was on the USS Midway when we went to South Korea several times. Our berthing area had 100 racks (where we slept). The air took on a distinctive odor the day after we pulled in to Pusan in a large part to the methane producing qualities of Kimchi.
Pattaya Beach, Thailand had one of the best Italian restaurants outside of Italy that I ate in. We went there about 5 times in the 4 years I was on the Midway, and got to try a lot of the different restaurants including French and a British one. It is one of the things I remember about the different ports we pulled into. Sydney has spectacular prawns; Olongapo in the Philippines had an excellent Steak Diane; and in Mombasa, Kenya it was best to eat on the ship.

I stayed in Bangkok, Chaing Mai, Chaing Rai, then Udon.

lol....I enjoyed reading all of that! Good job we don't all like the same foods isn't it? I'm pretty averse to green leaves myself although I do like Kale crisps very much (like dried seaweed, done in the oven) and I like raw baby spinach too. If you absolutely 'have' to eat it for medicinal reasons, then get a nutribullet or similar and put it in a smoothie like Bamboo suggests. Much nicer. :) I think most veg. tastes better raw than cooked. Someone said you could eat beetroot tops, so I tried them, but they are truly disgusting! Brussel Sprouts cooked on the hob in butter with bacon and chestnuts and a swirl of cream are a 'must' for me at Christmas. Yum, yum!

I love Brussels sprouts too Karen. Sauteed in olive oil and a little salt and pepper. I think I'm the one who told you about the beet root tops. Sorry you didn't like them. I love them sauteed with onions in butter or Olive oil and a splash of pepper sauce. We all have different tastes and that's ok just like you said ☺️

lol! sorry Bathgate! :) Actually, I've seen it on TV as well.

LOL I'm guilty as charged!