Chocolate with salt

I have a very special relationship with kale and until that dish, it wasn't a very good one.
My first encounter with kale was at German Christmas markets. It was that ugly side dish served with sausage or with sausage pieces in it and the texture and dead green color of it, simmering the whole day, always threw me off and I actually tried it only once and it was as dreadful as I always imagined, so I pushed even the consideration of preparing it myself far from me.

My next collision with kale wasn't good either. The organic store, we order from every week, offered kale and I didn't really know what it is. The funny thing is, when I looked for Kale in German recipes, I found lots of them and I didn't even stumble upon the German expression or let say, I didn't really realize, what it was..
Unfortunately either the Kale was old or I prepared it incorrectly, it was a big failure. For the first time in my life I had to throw away a whole dish to the bin. And the recipe sounded so good, the finished dish looked delicious, but the kale was just so extremely bitter, it was inedible. I remember putting tons of Parmesan cheese on it, hoping to make it at least edible... It ended in the bin and I gave our house keeper the second bunch I still had in the fridge.
I asked her later, if the one I gave her was also bitter, but she negated. So I tried to figure out, what I did wrong and asked her how to cook it properly, in order to avoid the bitterness.

I ordered once again kale at our organic store.

Third time lucky, this dish was divine! The combination of all ingredients, including the potatoes and the smoked pork chops was just perfect. I almost forgot, I found the recipe here and didn't change much, it was just good as it was.

We managed to go to our organic market on Saturday morning. It's a really nice, small market, mostly  extremely packed with people, but I kinda like the atmosphere. That's one of these moments, when I miss the beautiful, huge markets of Berlin, I loved to saunter around on my days off. I like getting my groceries from the markets, it's like the small corner shops from the earlier days. You get the chance to talk to the farmers, see where your food is coming from, ask questions and being social.
Be that as it may, we bought okra again and I was eager for preparing another, for me exotic, dish with that wonderful vegetable.
As you maybe remember the article I read about okra and the writers dislike for okra getting slimy. Well, the following dish is one of those, but it didn't bother us at all, as it was in perfect harmony with all the other ingredients. I guess, if I have more time for preparing lunch (at the moment both kids are at home due to the kindergarten being closed for two weeks) I will give it a try to prepare the okra as in the article described, in order to get rid of the sliminess and check if I prefer the dish that way. But as I said, I wasn't bothered and just noticed, what the author meant.
The dish is inspired by that recipe, but as you will see, I changed quite a bit, especially because I was running out of time and the given recipe was very time consuming. Nevertheless we were more than pleased, so was our guest, we had that day for lunch. There is only one thing left to say, you must find out for yourself which recipe you prefer. Anyway, here is my take on

West African chicken stew with okra

As I already mentioned, we finally found a Namibian supplier of dairy products, that is on top of it organic.  We order every week online, not only our milk. Since they work together with other farmers, we also get the chance to order organic vegetables, meat, preserves and all kind of yummy stuff.