Yesterday I had some screw-ups.
- Those greens I cooked were just too strong-tasting without added fat, so I put them back on the stove and added a couple more cans of diced tomatoes. Still not good.
- Added pinto beans. This helped a little, but I realized that I had cooked the pintos for too long, and I should have seasoned them beforehand. Overcooked beans become watery and flabby.
- By this time I had my 6-quart Dutch oven filled to the brim with a concoction that looked like pig slop. The gloppy dull-green strings of vegetation were grossing me out. I decided to puree it in the food processor.
- Pureeing didn’t help. Now it looked like a cross between vomit and… the other end. I threw it out. Life is too short to eat things that don’t taste good and look terrible besides.
Lessons learned:
- When it comes to bitter greens, I’m going to have to experiment with how to get them into my diet. More spinach, less collards. I could eat a whole pot of them when I could season them with bacon. Can’t do that anymore!
- Also, I think I need to avoid bagged greens. They chop the thick stems into the mix, and with collards and kale especially, they’re just too tough and stringy most of the time. (OMG, this reminds me of when Mom and I grew some rutabagas. The beggies themselves were wonderful. But then I tried cooking some of the greens, and they were horrible. Way too strong-tasting, and simultaneously mushy, tough and stringy. )
- Soak beans beforehand, which boosts their nutritional value. According to Fuhrman, soaking starts the sprouting process – not to the point of seeing actual sprouts, but enough that beneficial compounds are created. Then simmer them only until they’re tender, before they start to break apart. And I need to go back to adding a chunk of kombu (seaweed) to the pot – a time-honored way to give beans an umami flavor.
I can’t wait till my blender gets here. I could put 2 cups of chopped kale in a smoothie and not even taste it with all the other stuff included.
Also, I need to dig out my postal scale and weigh everything. I need to understand the volume of a pound of trimmed and chopped greens.
Eat Like a Giraffe 