Savoy Greens

This past Sunday Full Circle Farm was selling Savoy cabbage greens, tied in neat bunches. They looked kind of like collards, but their leaves were wrinkly like Lacinato kale (also known as Dino kale, black kale and Italian kale.)

When I asked about them, the guy said, "Yeah, they're going out into the fields and looking for anything they can possibly sell."

It's been a rough spring here in the Northwest. Granted, we haven't had to deal with anything like fatal, historic tornado outbreaks, but we have had our coldest April on record and there's not a lot of local produce available.

I'm convinced that an important part of the process of ending food insecurity involves making friends with parts of edible plants that we typically shun. I've been known to go around asking farmers to save me the broccoli and cauliflower leaves that they typically trim and discard. These leaves are perfectly edible: they're just a little tougher than collards, and a little sweeter. I pay the farmers for these greens: not as much as they'd get selling their produce retail, but certainly more than they'd get if they tossed them on the compost pile. I use them in the veggie mix I serve, introducing them back into the food chain.

I cooked up a bunch of these savoy cabbage greens for lunch yesterday, along with a chopped leek, a few spears of asparagus, some leftover quinoa and a bit of fancy vinegar. The greens were a little tough, but if I'd been more patient and less hungry I could have cooked them just a few minutes longer. All in all, it was a tasty, convenient use of something that would otherwise have ended up on the compost pile.