It's a shame the original color cannot be saved. It changes to the unsightliest green. You know what this death green color needs? Cheerful pink. Like salmon or maybe cranberries, color dots, if only to break up this ghastly background. This is the sort of thing that turns off kids.
The girl I encountered at the corner of the cooler where the bunches of greens are stacked was holding the last bunch of mustard greens and scrounging around for more. The store still had bags of prewashed and cut mustard greens but those are a distant second choice. Three times the cost, they controlled the cut, and they cut right through the thick central stem leaving it in instead of cutting it out like normal people do. So that's what I got, a bag of prewashed mustard greens. Plus another bunch of regular collard.
The girl seemed to be the leader of the little pack although not the oldest. She was already expostulating to the other girls on the choice of greens presently at that store. She would be making a LOT of mixed greens.
"So how do you cook these, if I may ask?"
She turned and spoke directly to me, apparently pleased that someone had asked, and described in detail the initial preparation, cutting, rinsing and so forth, she described the water situation and adding greens to the pot as space becomes available through shrinkage. The whole thing.
"So how long do you cook them?"
"Two, two and a half hours."
And that was that.
She did not tell me to finish with vinegar and butter or about any possible additions like ham hoc or bacon or sausage or salt pork, no other vegetable additions like pecans or other nuts. No other ideas about mixing possibilities as with potatoes or carrots or parsnips. She did not suggest onion or garlic or any other allium and no seasoning. No crunch, no capsaicin heat, nor anything sweet. Nothing aromatic, no bay, no cilantro, no ginger, no mustard, none of the customary flavoring things that come to mind automatically.
She did not suggest I could cut cooking time 75% by simply using a pressure pot.
I wonder what her greens are like. Then what do people do at the table? Do they douse it with hot sauce or what?
Greens are what I missed when I sat up in hospital over Thanksgiving. My friends were having a dinner that would include greens. My family never had these greens ever much less traditionally, but my friends do. That's where I picked up the idea. Now the greens have become all that I cared about. All those other traditional things, not so much. So I am very happy to have the greens now and to have them the way that I make them. I made extra.
And hamburger by the way. Broiled this time. I picked up the 20% fat version because I am not messing around with those pesky skinny-ass cows anymore.
