Kale, a four letter word.

Some vegetables get no respect. Sure if you are corn and potatoes and anything else that can be drenched with butter and tarted up with cheese, you're easy to love. Or bathe a vegetable in olive oil and roast at a high temperature until it caramelizes and you've got yourself another winner. Yes squash, kohlrabi and parsnip, I am definitely talking to you.

And then there's kale. Ahhh kale. I've tried to love you. I've put you in soup with sausage and white beans, made you into chips kissed with salt and cider vinegar, tried you raw. It's not working kale. I think we need an intervention.

I've gotten my husband and two kids to like broccoli (Melissa Clarke's Sesame-Cured Raw Broccoli Salad: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/dining/201arex.html ). They inhale Swiss chard (http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/skillet_gnocchi_with_chard_white_beans.html). And they like collards cooked low and slow with Truck Patch Farm bacon http://truckpatchfarms.com/index.html.

But kale, you disappoint. Your flavor is too harsh, too green, two kaleish. They can sniff you out and turn up their noses in no time. And there is only so much kale one woman can eat before she admits defeat.

The other night I went to a meeting of a parent group trying to get the county schools to serve healthier lunches. As I was leaving my husband and kids were shouting suggestions of foods I should be lobbying for. The words that followed me out the door were these, "Whatever you do," my husband said, "don't tell them we need more kale."