A Girl Needs Her Greens: How to Eat More Greens

I had joined a CSA program in my hood, and I was starting to see green. Every week I picked up two large bags full of vegetables, many of them greens of some kind. Curly mustard greens, Chicoria (dandelion greens), Mizuna (Japanese mustard greens) and stinging nettles. What’s a girl to do with all these greens?

The Purist told me the way to cook greens was to wilt them with olive oil and garlic, which was delicious. I began wilting greens at every meal. I had wilted greens on top of my fried eggs and toast, for lunch on a warm goat cheese crostini, as a side to tomato risotto for dinner. I also made salads with the greens, then went back to wilting them. It was all good, and good for me, but I needed something different.

One day we got stinging nettles. I had to handle them with gloves or plastic bags before cooking them so as not to get a red rash from the stinging hairs on the stalk. And what to do with nettles besides wilt them like greens? Then, during a weekend in Santa Barbara wine country, I had a a wild nettle flatbread with farm egg, leek cream sauce, smoked mozzarella and thyme at a local organic restaurant (Full of Life Flatbread Bakery). Pizza! With the slightly bitter/smoky twist nettles had on greens – combined with local produce and mozzerella on crispy organic pizza dough! Oh!

A new flatbread obsession took hold: I had to recreate this flatbread – over and over. A girl’s gonna need more greens.

Thank god for CSA.

Read the results of this eating-more-vegetables-in-season experiment:

• Where it all started – New Year resolution to eat more vegetables in season
• Carrot Soup
• Braised Cabbage you can Eat Every Day