Prolific and inexpensive, greens are packed with an impressive array of vitamins and minerals including vitamins B1, B2, B6, C, and E, calcium, carotenes, copper, folic acid, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and potassium.  Our immune systems are bursting with vigor from eating so much kale, chard, spinach, beet, turnip, and mustard greens.

Greens weren’t a part of my childhood.  I was raised in the north on northern vegetables, many of them frozen, taken from the freezer and plopped into the steamer as solid bricks of peas, corn, broccoli, spinach, lima beans or brussel sprouts.  My least favorites were okra, a slimy mound of fibrous discs and frog’s eyes and the whole leaf spinach which made me gag as the long veins worked their way down my throat.

It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I began cooking with fresh greens.  It began with stirring a pound of chard into a pot of curry and evolved into greens as a side dish in its own right. This time of year, we’re eating half a bushel of greens a week.

Each week we pick up our weekly half bushel of fresh picked produce from Edible Earthscapes.  This week it was packed with kale, chard, mustard greens, mizuna, carrots, and salad greens. This past Friday, Bob brought home a grocery bag full of kale and a half bushel of radishes, turnips and carrots, greens attached from Central Carolina Community College’s Land Lab.

The challenge of turning all of these greens into food can be daunting.  Last night while I stood at the sink, rinsing and chopping greens, I couldn’t help but stare at the enormous kale plant outside our kitchen window, crying out to be harvested.  “Any day now” I thought “Bob’s going to walk inside with his arms full of kale.”  I caught myself hoping today wasn’t going to be that day.

Last year I froze a fair amount of greens and that worked out great.  I just wash and chop and put them into plastic freezer bags and squeeze out the air.  We cooked and served these frozen greens at a New Years Day party and they were just fine.

This year, I’ve challenged myself to keep up with the greens by cooking them as I get them to eat that night or keep for another meal.  Save the freezer space.  Get the vitamins at their fullest. It doesn’t take that long to fix them up when we get them and a grocery bag full cooks down into six or seven cups which takes up a lot less space in the refrigerator.

Here’s what I do.  I chop an onion and sauté it in peanut oil in a large pot. I put all the greens in the sink and rinse them, then stack the leaves on the cutting board and chop them into bite sized pieces.  I’m finicky enough to remove the large veins from everything but the chard but that’s up to you.

Stir the chopped chard stems and the heavier greens (kale, chard, mustard greens and collards) into the onion, add a couple of tablespoons of tamari or soy sauce and cover to let them steam.  After a few minutes, I stir the greens up with the onion and add the lighter greens – spinach, turnip, radish and mizuna to steam for another minute.

This delicious green vitamin dish is now ready for storage or can be cooked a little longer and served immediately.  And that’s how easy it is to keep up with the greens!

A few weeks ago, it was cabbage.  ECO sent an email offering 1.8 bushel boxes for $15 in order to cut the loss to the farmer.  Bob bought a box and we began working our way through forty pounds of cabbage.

The first thing Bob did was give away five heads.  That night I fixed one of our favorite cabbage meals: “Repollo Orientale” which is Spanish for Oriental Cabbage.

Repollo Orientale was the brainchild of the Nicaraguan cook at a lodge on Little Corn Island who often served it to the help for lunch back when we were on staff.  It’s an easy, tasty dish made of sautéed cabbage, garlic and onions seasoned with shoyu, ginger, cayenne and sesame oil and served over fettuccini.

The next day sixteen juicy Cabbage Burgers went on the potluck table with a marinara sauce for dipping.  They went over well and we sent four more heads of cabbage home with friends.

To make the Cabbage Burgers, I started with a spicy, foccacia dough which I rolled out and stuffed with a filling of fried Gimme Lean sausage, cabbage, onions and garlic.  Click on “Continue Reading A CASE OF CABBAGE” below for the recipe.  The nice thing about these is they store well and can be eaten later.

That weekend, we processed more of our windfall into sauerkraut using Sandor Katz’s recipe.  This is our first attempt at kraut and we’re excited because we love sauerkraut with mashed potatoes and Tofurky Kielbasa or Beer Brats.  Every week that kraut gets tastier and we’ve already used some of it in a Borscht I made using local beets and dill.

We also love cole slaw, so I shredded six heads and mixed them with mayonnaise, sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar.  I added some shredded carrots from our garden for color.  That first week after we got our case of cabbage, no one left our house without cole slaw or some other form of cabbage.

By far, the best thing we did with our cabbage windfall was have an Okonomiyaki party with our friends Jason and Haruka of Edible Earthscapes.  Okonomiyaki, or Japanese Pizza is not difficult to make if you have a griddle and a mix for the batter.  But you can also mix up your own batter and fry them in a cast iron pan.  Here’s a link to a blog dedicated to Okonomiyaki with batter recipes and videos: http://okonomiyakirecipes.nthmost.com/

As unlikely as it sounds, cabbage pizza is indescribably delicious!

One and a half heads to go and we’re unable to decide whether to put it into Okonomiyaki, kraut, slaw, Oriental, Borscht or cabbage burgers.  I suspect we’re putting off the decision because we don’t want this wild cabbage ride to end.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and happen into another case of cabbage from Eastern Carolina Organics.

Cabbage Burgers – Vegan Version

Foccacia Dough:
3-4 cups Flour (about 600 grams)
1 ½  Teaspoons Sugar
1 ½ Teaspoons Salt
1  ½ Tablespoons Active Yeast
1  ½ Teaspoons Garlic Powder
1 Tablespoon Onion Powder
1  ½ Teaspoons Thyme, ground or fresh
1  ½ Teaspoons Oregano, ground or fresh
1/8 Teaspoon Black Pepper
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 ½  Cups Warm Water

Cabbage Filling:
1 lb Gimme Lean (sausage style)
2 Tablespoons Oil – olive, peanut, etc.
1 large onion, thinly sliced into inch long pieces
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ small heads cabbage, shredded (not grated)
Water or Extra Dry Sherry
Salt, Black Pepper, A-1 sauce – to taste

• Mix up your dough and set aside to rise for 20-25 minutes
• Fry the sausage in oil, remove from pan and set aside
• Fry the onion and garlic in oil
• Add the cabbage and continue to fry
• If the vegetables begin to stick before the cabbage is soft, you can add a little water or extra dry Sherry, cover and turn the heat down to braise
• Add about 2 tablespoons of A-1 Sauce
• Season with salt and pepper to taste
• Turn off heat, mix the sausage back in and set aside
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Lay parchment paper on or lightly oil a large cookie sheet or two 9 x 13 pans
• Punch down the dough and cut into 16 equal pieces
• Roll each piece out into a round or square shape about ¼ inch thick
• Place about 3 Tablespoons of the Cabbage Filling in the middle of the dough
• Bring two sides up and pinch shut
• Repeat with the other two sides
• Place the ‘burger’ seam-side down in the pans or on the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart
• Let rise about 10 minutes after the last ‘burger’ has been rolled, stuffed and placed
• Bake 20 -25 minutes until barely browned on top but fairly browned on the bottom.
• Serve with barbecue or marinara sauce for dipping

Asian Style Cabbage Burgers– we think these would be great made with Gimme Lean ground beef style, ginger, garlic and sherry and served with sweet and sour or peanut sauce.

Vegans don’t eat Kentucky Fried Chicken! Regardless of how many buckets they may have consumed in a previous life.

But wait, it was okay! The little sign on the sample table said that the woman smiling behind the electric fry pan was cooking tofu. Bob picked up a fork and pierced the crispy coating on a succulent bite of fried tofu. “You better have some,” he said, handing me the fork.

So I did. And handed him the fork so he could have another taste. We passed the fork back and forth for a little while before asking for the recipe, then passed it back and forth a few more times. After that, we went and bought four pounds of tofu, some local greens, stocked up on canned tomatos and picked up the twenty-five pound bag of soybeans that had brought us to town in the first place.

We were hardly able to contain our excitement in the check out line. We were hungry from cleaning stalls and itching to get home and fry us up some tofu! Which we did, and it was fabulous. We steamed up some kale, boiled some noodles, made gravy from the pan drippings and stuffed ourselves.

About six hours later, we fished the leftovers out of the refrigerator and chowed down again. Honestly, this stuff tasted like cold Kentucky Fried Chicken. We were so impressed, we added the recipe to our Website here.