We thought we had attended our last farmer’s market of the year until I got a call from Natalie of the Grateful Growers Saturday asking us if we would like to join them at the market on Wednesday afternoon.
Well, yeah… eating collards, black-eyed peas, cornbread and pork on New Year’s is a southern tradition and what better day of the year to sell our fresh, organic, just picked collards than New Year’s eve.
I contacted Maria at Fisher Farms and she said they would also be there Wednesday with collards, kale, and jars of their excellent tomato sauce that they actually make themselves.
Besides collards, we will have about 25 dozen eggs, some Tuscan kale, and some arugula.
Black-eyed peas represent coins, collards folding money, cornbread = gold, and pork, wealth in general.
I ran across an an interesting reason why pork, rather than chicken or beef, is the preferred meat for New Year’s.
Chickens scratch backwards, then back up to eat what they scratched up. Cows basically stand still most of the day. Pigs on the other hand, are always rooting forward. Seeking out new opportunities.
Cooking Collards
First thing, rinse them off. Since our farm has clay soils rather than sand, grit is not much of a problem. We rinse our collards in a couple of inches of water in the sink. If there is still some soil attached, I call that a natural nutritional supplement because we know how it grew and what we amended the soil with. If you don’t know the source of your collards or who grew them, I would suggest rinsing them 3-4 times in cold water.
REMOVE THE RIBS – Even on the small leaves. I have tried stacking leaves 5-6 leaves deep and cutting out an upside down V to remove the ribs but the fastest way I have found is to just fold them in half and make one cut to remove the rib.
Use a knife bigger than a paring knife and smaller than a chef’s knife. I use a rabbit knife.
Don’t discard the ribs. They will go to your pigs, chickens, worm bin, or compost pile. If you have none of the above, discard them around the closest tree. Don’t InSinkErate or put them in a plastic bag destined for the landfill.
You can stir-fry / saute collards in 10-15 minutes or simmer them for an hour or so. Minced garlic and onion work well starting out on both methods, your favorite hot sauce, if that trips your trigger, can be applied anywhere along the way. Finish them off with apple cider vinegar and a sparse grinding of black pepper.
Splurging
We are going to eat our collards and black-eyed peas with some oven cooked ribs finished on the grill from the Grateful Growers. We are going to dump a small jar of Fisher Farms tomato sauce into our pot of peas.
You can get dried black-eyed peas at the market as well as local cornmeal from Linneys Water Mill in Union Grove.
Good-bye 2009
It has been a good year for us. We have had our share of up’s and down’s, but we ain’t complaining.
Happy Music
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I used to cut off all the ribs on the collard leaves. I’ve recently cut off only the very thick part of the rib at the base of the leaf, leaving the remainder of the rib. I chop all of it up, just as the leaves, and I’ve discovered they cook to be very tender– and are delicious, too!
Wyn Page