For years we’ve been making our collards the old-fashioned way: boiling them to death. But lately my wife expressed concerns that we were leaching all the nutrient goodness out of our greens. Could we prepare them a better way? This week I picked up a bunch of large-leafed collards at the farmers market and tried [...]
Collard greens are an amazing thing. Despite blasts of arctic air, snow and freezing rain, the keep on ticking. Here you see what our look like this morning with the temperature around 34 degrees. Kale and certain types of mustard greens will do the same thing. If it gets really cold, they wilt and fall [...]
Tags: collards·kale·pomegranate·vegetarian·winter
This just proves that flavor doesn’t care where it comes from. In anticipation of boiling some collards, I simmered smoked turkey necks for a long time in a pot of water, then added a ham bone that turned up in the process of catering a client’s buffet. This mongrel broth was not so much to [...]
Tags: collards·ham·leftovers·sweet potatoes
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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