Wednesday, March 24, 2021
SAVE THE COLLARDS!!!
In the American South, many people have fond memories of a pot of collard greens simmering on the stove for hours, seasoned with a ham hock and stirred by a parent or grandparent. Cousins to cauliflower and broccoli, collards are a hearty green known for their robust, slightly bitter taste and the rich, nutritious “pot liquor” they produce when cooked. These greens and their liquor have been lauded for generations, but few in the South know that there’s more than one kind of collard green. Even fewer know that there are dozens of different varieties, and that many are now on the verge of disappearing forever.
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I first tasted these in Kenya and have enjoyed them ever since. I had them in 2007 and now grow them in my small garden in the front yard
ReplyDelete...just keep Monsanto away from the seeds. They'll hybridize them then put you in jail or bankrupt you for not buying more of THEIR seeds AND you aren't allowed to keep some of of the seeds that YOU GREW and harvested as seeds for next year.
ReplyDeleteBut hey we're free and all that happy horse shit.
Nemo
Indeed, Nemo. Ask India how that shit worked out for them. And can you guess what corporate headquarters's cafeteria does not allow GMO foods?
DeleteIndeed, Nemo. Ask India how that shit worked out for them. And can you guess what corporate headquarters's cafeteria does not allow GMO foods?
DeleteWait you can get liquor from them
ReplyDeleteno, thats just a term used to describe the savory broth.
DeleteThe word liquor has more than ten definitions in a full size dictionary.
DeleteLove me some collards with bacon and swamp cabbage. The closet we get up here in the NW is turnip and mustard greens. All three of them are full of nutrients and vitamins, which might be why they are being eradicated. The smell of collards cooking may also be a factor.
ReplyDeleteI like poke salad too.
ReplyDeletePoke weed is awesome. I cook it in a change of water and eat it like spinach (butter or bacon fat, a little salt/pepper, and maybe a little vinegar). Get the young leaves - palm sized or less - before they get tough. Shoots are good too - just get’em while they’re still tender - about pencil diameter. Reminds me of asparagus.
DeleteI grew up farming collard greens in Alabama. We generally had between 40 and 100 acres of greens any given year, and an average day saw us harvesting 200 dozen bunches. During my farming career, I estimate that I have handled somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.3 million bunches of collards. A bunch was usually either two or three plants (depending on the size of the plant), depending on which market it was going to. Birmingham wanted a smaller bunch than Atlanta.
ReplyDeleteWe were a family farm, my mom and dad and three older brothers. We hired some local labor during harvest season, but as far as transplanting, plowing, and hoeing, it was just us. It was all hand labor and long hours. Hated it then, but kind of miss it now.
They used to have special collard drinking fountains down south, if I recall correctly.
ReplyDeleteShameful practice no longer allowed.
Winner!
DeleteToday, you can buy several varieties of rice, but they all cook about the same and they all taste about the same. But I can't find any rice that cooks like the rice we ate in High School back in the 60's.
ReplyDeleteDid Monsanto do away with that rice variety? Or maybe it is an old heritage variety that no longer is available for sale? How much longer are we go0ing to put up with big corporate fucking with our foods?
How long? As long as we buy it from them. Either grow your own, or buy from local farmers. (and yeah, I know that’s hard to do for rice in most USA locales...). :-/
Delete