One thing you may not know about me is that one of my casual hobbies is interior decorating. I’ve picked out paint colors for my friends, rearranged their furniture, and weighed in on frame choices, picture positioning, and all kinds of related activities. Have you ever heard of decorating with complementary colors? Have you ever even heard of complementary colors? It’s when you choose two colors from opposite sides of the color wheel, like purple and yellow, orange and blue, or red and green. They usually clash just a little bit, which confers added visual interest. Here are some examples: A pink pillow that makes a pale green couch really SING! Or a wrapped bunch of lavender stalks in a pale yellow vase on a lemon-yellow tablecloth strewn with tiny purple violets. Or a ceramic bowl painted in stripes of turquoise and orange. And that brings me to sweet potatoes and kale.

Just as decorating with complementary colors increases the visual value of the things we see, cooking with complementary colors and ingredients increases the nutritional value of the foods we eat. Cooking with complementary colors guarantees that you’re going to eat more colors, and since every color represents a different phytonutrient, it’s another way of nourishing yourself better. When you choose ingredients from around the color wheel, it’s like you’re decorating yourself from the inside out. The meal looks lovely and tastes terrific.

Complementary Soup
2 quarts stock (vegetable, chicken, or turkey)
2 medium sweet potatoes, sliced thickly and quartered
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced thickly
1 bunch fresh kale, rinsed, de-ribbed, and sliced into ribbons
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

Add 2 quarts of stock, whether homemade or commercial (there’s a great vegetable stock at our local supermarket), to a large soup pot. Add the sweet potatoes and carrots, and cook on medium-high heat for 30-45 minutes until soft. Add the kale, cook more 5 minutes until the kale turns bright green. Season to taste, and serve immediately. This soup is so simple, and yet so delicious. That’s because the stock is key.  

Homemade Stock
Today’s post also includes a lesson for making chicken or turkey stock. Yes, it’s worth it. The next time you make a chicken or turkey, do not toss the carcass into the trash. If you don’t have time to make stock now, put the carcass inside a plastic bag, tie it tight, and put it into the freezer until the weekend. Then proceed. 

Place the carcass (frozen or fresh) in a large soup pot, fill half-way to two-thirds full with water, and add 1-1½  teaspoons of vinegar. This part is essential. Without vinegar you won’t get the results you’re looking for. Any kind of vinegar is fine — I usually use white or cider vinegar. Turn the heat to medium, and cover. Once the top of the pot is too hot to touch for more than an instant, turn down the heat to the lowest possible setting, and leave the stock to cook for 6-8 hours. The less you bother it, and the less turbulent the boil, the better the stock. So don’t stir, don’t peek, and don’t turn up the heat. Go find something else to do.

After 6-8 hours have passed, turn off the heat and let the stock cool for a while, say 15-20 minutes. Open a clean dish towel across a colander, place the colander over a second large pot, and pour through it the contents of the stockpot, bones and all, allowing all the liquid to drain into the second pot below. You will now have a beautiful clear broth to do with whatever you like. If you aren’t planning to use it right away, pour it into labeled containers and put them into the freezer. Frozen stock will be good for up to 2 months.

Note:  This is a bare bones recipe, so to speak, and it’s how we make it at our house. But you can add vegetables if you’d like, such as a whole onion, a carrot, a clove of garlic, and/or a stalk of celery. Also, you can look through the contents of the colander afterward, and find bits of meat to add back to the broth.