Showing posts with label greens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greens. Show all posts

Monday, May 23, 2011

Eat your green vegetables

That's kale on the left, spinach on the top right, and baby bok choy on the bottom right.

Spicy sausage, a bit of garlic and onion, and chicken broth I made from a the remainder of a chicken came together to make a great soup. The kale went in first to cook a bit longer, then the bok choy and the spinach last. My first time cooking kale....and first home cooked bok choy. The bok choy is GREAT as it absorbs the salt and flavor from the broth. I picked the rest of the bok choy and added it to the soup the next day.


Note on the bok choy: I don't know why ours did not form a true head. It grew super fast and started going to seed quickly. Mostly I just picked the bottom leaves off the stem.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Mustard Greens


Despite growing up in the South, my mother never ever made any kind of greens....ever. None. I don't think she ever even served any kind of spinach cooked in any dish. No canned spinach. Only fresh in salads sometimes. Perhaps its because we are only Southerners by happenstance, not by birth. Having lived in several places in the South that would be considered far more Southern than Fayetteville, Arkansas, I have been exposed to far more greens in my adult life than my childhood. About a year ago I started cooking greens on a more regular basis.

At first it was just cabbage (never had it ONCE as a child), which Kyle loves. Then it was collard greens, which take quite a bit of bacon grease to taste good....or you just eat them because you know they are good for you. Then came beet greens from the garden and radish greens as well. Those were actually not planned last fall, but mere after thoughts. I considered planting collards this year, but they were left out of the plan. This spring I have had three rounds of radish greens and Kyle planted some beets that are bred especially for tasty greens. That brings us to mustard greens. They were planted a bit later than most of the early spring garden, but they sure are producing! This is the first batch I picked, and there are several batches left.

While the other greens are often stewed in the crockpot to make them tender, the mustard green recipes I found called for wilting in butter (or bacon grease) then cooking with just a cup or two of water until they reach your preferred tenderness. The cooking process takes less than 20 minutes, though prep time includes washing. Luckily these greens had very little dirt on them. Supposedly I was supposed to harvest them when they were smaller, but these were tender enough and had a great taste. WAY better than collards or the other greens I have tried.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Mid-May walk through

One of the potato cages. They have been mounded up with extra compost. The newspaper help holds the soil in the chicken wire cage.



The chives blooming



Red leaf lettuce



The patch of romaine lettuce. Big producer.



Mustard greens