August greens are some of my favorite—collards, mustards, kale. They’re especially yummy with potatoes. We’re told that leafy greens are good for us, but why? They’re nutritious (think, for kale: vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, fiber, folate, and more) and delicious. In FoodWISE, I talk about experiments with leafy greens, like here:

I idolized Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, while I was in graduate school—and once even got to cook dinner for her in my tiny studio apartment. I made her one of my favorite pressure cooker meals, which invariably consisted of my canned tomatoes, barley, butter, cheese, cabbage and leafy greens, and plenty of seasonings (see “Pressure Cooker Vegetable Stew,” in Part 4 Recipes of FoodWISE).

I talk about this more on You Tube:

But here’s the quick version of just the leafy greens part:

Recipe

*Wash the greens

*Steam them until tender

*Squeeze out excess moisture

*Sauté with olive oil and garlic.

Or, you can skip the squeeze-and-sauté part.

And where do you get your greens?

Where to get greens

Anywhere (but I especially love my farm, and my friends, like Inspiration Farm). As, I write in FoodWISE,

I admit, I appreciate the convenience of mega-farm organic greens—it’s there in the store, it’s washed. And at least I know that municipal sewage sludge was not used as a fertilizer, nor were the products irradiated at some step of processing. Yes, it’s not mine, or my farmers market friends’, and it may be far from local. On the other hand, I recognize that it is a luxury to be able to buy local at a farmers market. For people who can’t, Safeway’s local organic still supports a WISEr food culture than Amazon-delivered Dole Food Company might. Again, it’s a question of what’s important to you, and what you can reasonably do. Our mantra should be: stop—think—then act.