Potato chips aren’t exactly considered healthy food. Fair enough. But I’m not against having some enjoyable junk food in a healthy diet.

Bok choy, or Chinese cabbage, isn’t exactly delicious food. Fair enough. But I’m not exactly for eating only healthy foods in a healthy diet.

During my weekly mind opening exercise this week, to help myself stay open-minded, I thought up the idea of combining the two for a fast, easy and healthy snack! It could even be multiplied in size to make a fast, healthy meal, though not one I would advise to be eaten frequently, of course. It’s healthy but not complete, for neither nutritional nor caloric needs.

Why bok choy and chips?

Bok choy is scientifically considered a nutritional “powerhouse” vegetable. A study from the US Center for Disease Control (US CDC) identified 47 fruits and vegetables to be studied for being a nutritional density “powerhouse”. Bok choy finished #2 next to watercress, while the highly regarded blueberry didn’t even make the cut to be called a “powerhouse”, let alone rank on the table! Its main nutritional components are Vitamins A and C, but it has many other nutrients and benefits.

Bok choy is a tad sweet and a tad bitter, which is why it might not be the most tasty thing to snack on for most people. It is a soft crispy on the stem end, and tender on the leaf end.

Chips, on the other hand, are a perfect complement and contrast to this. There’s usually a little salt to most chip flavours, and a strong enough flavour to mask much of the bok choy flavour for those who don’t like it. Get the plainest of chips if you want the bok choy flavour. The dry and hard crunchy texture of chips mixes well with the slightly wet and soft crunchy texture of washed bok choy. For what bad stuff chips might have in them, you’ll never eat enough in a snack to do yourself any harm unless you were allergic or have some reaction to them. One cluster of bok choy would generally require only 6-8 pieces of chips, and two clusters might well be enough for a decent sized snack. How many pieces of chips do you think people usually eat at sitting?

What kind of chips to use?

That’s really up to you. I’ll only tell you that what worked well for me has been chips with some salty flavour to it. That’s strong enough to override the bok choy taste so that it is mostly just a texture in the snack, not a main flavour. It tastes like I’m eating chips with something, not bok choy with something.

I personally like eating Pringles chips with this snack just because of the packaging. I can just remove a stack of chips, with few broken like at the end of bags of chips. A can is also all I’ll need for a week and a whole whack of bok choy! Left over chips I just treat myself to after all that bok choy before the next week’s batch.

Easy to find

This snack is easy because both things are easy to find. Chips are too easy to find, obviously. Bok choy or Chinese cabbage isn’t hard to find, either, unlike what its exotic name might suggest. They’re available in a lot of grocery stores. Even Wal-mart in the small Maritime provinces of Canada where I live has it!

Easy to prepare

The chips, you just grab a handful of pieces or a small stack if they’re of the flat kind. The bok choy, just grab a cluster that they naturally grow in. It’s more like a stalk or bulb with leaves as seen in the picture at right.

You wash the bok choy like you would any other vegetable.

Store in different compartments or two small containers if you were packing it. Or just grab your Pringles can if that were your chips like they are mine, and put the bok choy in a small bag or container.

How to eat

I just grab a chip and rip off a leaf of bok choy and shove them in my mouth. 🙂

The serving layout was just for show. Some bok choy leaves are bigger than the chips shown so they wouldn’t always fit so nicely.

As for the chopsticks in that picture? A friend told me any meal can be made to look more elegant with chopsticks, especially nice chopsticks. The chopsticks were only there as a “sales job”.

Enjoy!

I hope you’ll try and like my snack idea here. I’m SO LOVING it already I’m going to become Bok Choy Boy in the near future and might have to find a bok choy rehab centre! 🙂

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