Everybody loves Cheesy Kale Chips! These make a raw food diet so easy to stay with because you will never feel deprived when you can treat yourself to a delicious snack like Cheesy Kale Chips!

I first found them in the raw food section at the San Francisco Whole Foods, made by a Berkeley company, Blessings Alive and Radiant Foods, and they were $6.99 for 3 oz. I was so addicted, I realized that if I was going to stay on the raw food living diet, that I needed to figure out how to make them myself. Now I make huge batches at home (12 to 16oz) for about $5.00. I found this recipe on a great website for raw dishes called http://goneraw.com Gone Raw is a wonderful website to find and share recipes with other raw food natural-born chefs! I was lucky to find it the first week I went raw.

Here’s how you’ll find the post about Cheesey Kale Chips on GoneRaw.com:
 If you've been lucky enough to try Blessings Cheesy Kale Chips you know they are AMAZING!! www.BlessingsAliveAndRadiantFoods.com
This recipe makes identical chips. I found it over on Rawfoodtalk.com, thanks to Rawknitster!! http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?p=494315&posted=1#post494315  They are so fantastic I wanted to make sure everyone knew about them.
INGREDIENTS:
1 large bunch of curly, green kale, washed, large stems removed, torn into bite size pieces
COATING:
1 cup cashews, (soaked 2 hours)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
juice of 1 lemon
2 t. agave (optional-I don't add, I like them more salty + savory)
1 T. nutritional yeast
1/2 t. himalayan pink crystal salt (use more or less to taste)
PREPARATION:
Put coating ingredients in Vitamix. Blend until smooth. Using your hands, massage coating onto kale pieces getting it inside of curls. Put on teflex sheets (don't worry about flattening them, they're better bunched up) and dehydrate at 105 overnight or until coating is dry. Slide onto mesh screens and dehydrate 12 hours, or until very crispy.

Check out all the variations members of Gone Raw have added here: http://goneraw.com/recipe/cheesy-kale-chips. I was once out of cashews and used macadamia nuts instead. I also used a bit more agave to make "sweet" cheesy kale chips. I thought they were fabulous and my kale-loving friends agreed.  Try your own variations and have fun with kale!

Note: The one major piece of eqiupment needed to make these is a dehydraror, which, in my opinion, is essential in a raw food living dieter's kitchen, because making your own snacks (chips, cookies, breads, bars, seasoned nuts etc.) will save you a ton of money in the long-run. But if you don't have the equipment to make your own (yet) you can buy cheesy and other flavors like Ranch, Pesto and Thai at Blessing's Site: http://www.blessingsaliveandradiantfoods.com/kaleinkrunch.html or here: http://www.therawfoodworld.com/index.php?cPath=100150_100148_100216_100282