Tonight, I prepared collard greens for myself. I have an inexplicable appreciation for some very Southern dishes; collard greens are among them. I prepared the ham hocks over the weekend, but by the time they were ready for use, my interest in cleaning and tearing into bits the collard green leaves had left me. So, I put it off.
But I had them tonight. My god, they are tasty! I cooked the one bunch of greens in the 'pot likker' from the ham hocks. Fifteen minutes on of a rolling boil and they were ready. I put the bit of meat from the ham hocks into a bowl, along with the greens, doused them with chile pequin vinegar (just cider vinegar that had been used to preserve fresh chile pequin peppers), and dug in. Spectacular! My father had a soft spot for greens, though I believe he liked turnip greens, which I cannot honestly say I would recognize (by sight or taste) if they bit me. But collard greens...life is worth living with some fresh collards!
There are times I like playing the geezer from the early years of the last century...I wasn't around then, of course, but I can fake it! Eating those old, strange Southern foods that so many people find dull or too bitter or whatever...it's appealing to me.
It would taste even better if I could be eating a huge 'mess of greens' to celebrate the unseating of the Republican majority in Congress (and the end of the Bush administration).
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