Greens in the winter are not only abundant but they are easy to grow, easy to cook, taste great, and are healthy — the darker the green the better. Dark leafy greens provide good amounts of fiber, calcium, beta-carotene, antioxidants, and other essential vitamins and minerals such as Vitamins A, E, and K, B2 (Riboflavin), and Folic Acid.

Planting Seeds My passion for eating greens in the winter arose as a result of a seemingly innocuous occurrence months earlier during a late summer day. Imagine the picnic table in my backyard scattered with the contents of my winter seed shoebox. I had just leafed through all of the winter seeds and figured out with the help of my housemate which seeds we should plant for our winter crop. Those seed packets lay on the table waiting to be planted in seed flats.

With each vegetable, we would have a conversation about how good the vegetable is (more enthusiasm = more seeds), how much we want to eat of that vegetable (eat lots = more seeds), how slowly or quickly the plant grows (slow growing plant = more seeds so that at harvest time, we have enough leaves for a good harvest), how much winter garden space we have left in the yard (always a negotiable point, more variety/amount = more space = more seeds), how hard a seed is to propagate (difficult seeds and older seeds = more seeds), and how cool the name is (cool name = more seeds). Dinosaur Kale (i.e. Lacinato Kale) just sounds better (and tastes better) than Curly Leaf Kale.

As is often the case, if someone at the picnic table likes a particular vegetable a lot, that person makes lots of happy noises about that seed, and we plant more seeds. Bok Choi Forest is one of my favorite phrases! Did you know that you can fit about 70 bok choi plants in a single seed flat? We do try to be realistic at times, but the phrase Bok Choi Forest sometimes means that a whole seed flat gets filled with bok choi. Mmmm Mmmmm!

Go wild with your own seed selections, and plant some perennials so that you always have greens. Some of the greens that typically go into our winter cooking include chard (red, yellow, white, orange), bok choi (or many of its various cousins), kale (Dinosaur, Red Leaf), mustard (Curly, Purple Sails), beet greens, New Zealand spinach, sorrel, broccoli rabb, collards, walking stick kale, fava bean leaves, and arugula.

We generally do one or two plantings in the seed flats in the late summer/early fall; place the flats in the cold frame; water them every day or so; watch them grow; and eventually plant the seedlings after a month or so. We occasionally run out of garden space (due to overzealousness at seed planting time  (see above) and donate our seedlings to others in the community. Then, we wait and wait and wait until the plants are finally ready to harvest.

Harvesting

Last winter, one of my cousins visited us every Sunday during the winter. We always put him to work in the garden and also taught him how to harvest everything we were growing. When he arrived in the afternoon, his first job was to pick greens for dinner. One day, many weeks into the winter, he told me that each week when I had asked him to pick greens for dinner, I never specified how many greens to pick. He just picked up a basket and picked greens. He was curious about that, so each week he picked more and more greens, and each week, we absorbed all of them into the dinner we prepared later in the evening. He found that concept rather fascinating, and to his surprise, delicious. He watched each week as greens were incorporated into soups, enchiladas, burritos, pesto, and stir-fry. In fact, he learned that most recipes could be improved by adding greens, something that most cookbook authors forget to mention!

Cooking: Steamed and Sauted Greens

Greens can definitely be eaten alone as a side-dish along with a little bit of seasoning. Almost any type of greens (although I think chard and spinach are the best with this method) can be washed and steamed with a little bit of lemon juice. To make this process extra-easy, during lemon season (that's right now), juice some lemons, freeze the juice in an ice cube tray, empty the frozen lemon cubes into a plastic bag, and store the bag of cubes in the freezer. Then, you can pop out 1 or 2 cubes as necessary throughout the year. To steam the greens, wash them and don't shake off all the water; then put them in a pan with some lemon juice or a lemon cube, and keep them on medium heat for about 7 minutes. They're done when they're still bright green (just before they turn to dark green) and cooked enough for your taste.

To saute greens, cut up the stems in small pieces and saute the stems in oil along with onions, garlic, and maybe ginger for 3 - 5 minutes. Cut up the remaining greens into ribbons (i.e. cut across the leaf from side-to-side) and put them into the pot. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 7 minutes. This simple saute turns into a more complex dish by adding additional spices (tamari, sesame oil, chili oil or hot chilis), and other non-green ingredients (tofu, yacon, radishes, rutabagas, turnips, etc.) along with some peanuts at the end. Experiment until you find a taste that you like. Serve the sauted greens with rice or quinoa.

Cooking: Greens in Every Dish

Cooking greens as part of every dish requires a bit of a mind shift. Basically, regardless of what the recipe calls for, add a lot of greens in addition. Also remember that greens reduce in size immensely when cooked. So, you can easily add lots and lots of greens to any dish. If they don't all fit in the pot at once, wait for them to cook down a little, and add some more! If you're making burritos, add everything that you would normally add, and then add a boatload of sauteed or steamed greens. Same with enchiladas, pasta, casseroles, chili, etc. You can make a greens soup entirely out of greens, use that immersible blender! The best salad of the winter time is a "Serious Green Salad" from a Country Sun recipe by Jody Main; it's made entirely of winter greens! If you have a hankering for pesto in the winter, either pull out a tub of basil pesto that you made in the summer, or harvest (or buy) a lot of arugula, and make a fresh winter arugula pesto. If you use spicy arugula, you'll get a nice spicy pesto. The possibilities are endless!

Try it out! Be creative, and add greens to your cooking!

Happily harvesting the Bok Choi Forest,

B.B.

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