Tuscan special

I have a really cool recipe app on my i-phone called 'Wholefoods Market'. Some of the reasons I like it are:

• You can limit to vegan or vegetarian
  
• You can specify a course or a category
  
• You can easily search for recipes containing an ingredient
  
• You can type in what you have on hand and bring up a list
  
• You can save favourites
  
• Best of all, it's FREE!

I have another free recipe app called 'Vegan YumYum', it isn't nearly as good - I think because there aren't as many recipes in the database.

So, after figuring out that my mystery green leafy vegetable was probably kale, I started searching for recipes. I found heaps of yummy options in Wholefoods, but I settled on one that was actually designed for kids simply called 'Pasta with greens'. Since the app is free I figure I can reproduce, so here it is.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
  
• 2 red onions, chopped (I only had brown onions, so just used 1 big one)
  
• 1 red capsicum, cored, seeded & chopped
  
• 1 bay leaf
  
• 1 TBS fresh thyme, chopped (I used 1tsp of dried)
  
• 450g penne, cooked
  
• 8 cups kale, cut in 2-inch wide strips
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
  
• 1 can cannellini beans, rinsed & drained (optional - I added these because I love them!)

Heat 3 TBS of the oil in a large pot. Add the onion, capsicum, bay leaf & thyme - cook 5mins, until the onion starts to brown. Add the kale & garlic & cook another 5mins. Add the beans & stock & cook 2mins. Add the pasta along with remaining oil & salt/pepper to taste.

This was pretty damn delicious & felt oh so healthy to wolf down. I've got enough leftovers to last another 2 meals too. A couple of things I noticed about cooking with kale:

• It's much tougher than silverbeet or chard
  
• It's much easier to peel away from the stem than either of those too
  
• It feels a little bit like you're eating... well, roughage (as in, leaves that humans weren't meant to consume). It was yummy, but maybe I didn't cook it for long enough, because even though it had reduced in volume by about 1/2, it was still quite chewy & rough.

P.s. If I'm honest, I have no idea if this is Tuscan or not. But I have a recipe for 'Tuscan white bean soup' that uses cannellini beans, garlic & thyme, so that's the first thing I thought of.