Closing Time

This past Saturday was a ‘work day’ at my house. All of the little and not-so-little projects got taken care of. Finally around 8:00 pm I took my exhausted wife out for dinner. She wanted pizza and this particular local chain also offers a salad bar. (Don’t tell, but neither of us partook in the salad.)

Around 8:30 pm the young lady who was manning the cash register started breaking down the salad bar. The first thing that happened was all of the garnish kale was tossed into the rolling trash can. YIKES! Throwing away a super food – how could you? But we all remember the days before lowly kale became super.

At the United show in Chicago a lovely lady stopped by our booth for a picture. We had on our red tomato jackets and she was wearing a green dress – she thought it would make a great image. During the conversation she told us that she has been making kale chips for years and now it has become so popular that she can’t keep up with production. How cool is that! The stuff that looked better than plastic and lasted like iron is now reinvented to be in great demand as a gourmet food item.

The closing time ritual is hard to watch today knowing that so many chefs are working hard to include kale in the salad, not just as garnish on the salad bar. The moral of the story is that we all can take on new energy, new life and a greater purpose if we just keep our eyes open for the opportunity.