On Sunday I bought two smoked turkey wings, split them with the heavy cleaver, took them home, put two cups of water and two of homemade stock in a pot, boiled it, then dumped in a bag of pre cut and washed mustard greens.

"Does your dad make greens?" BikeHusband asked.

"No."

"Does your mother make greens?"

"My mother makes terrible greens."  It's true.  Macrobiotic style, which means without flavor.

"How'd you learn to cook greens?"

"When I was very poor, greens were fifty cents a pound."

 Poverty is all mixed up in greens.  Outside of the South, most people can't tell collard from kale from mustard from beet from swiss chard from turnip, from something that I can't remember.  People think greens are soul food, poor food, black people food.  All this may be true, but I came to eat them because greens (collards and kale) used to be fifty cents a pound.

Collards are huge dinosaur snacks.  First, I'd take out the long stringy stem, then I'd roll half the leaf like a cigar, the I'd make one horizontal and four or five vertical cuts.  Then I'd deposit the rectangles into a colander in a sink of cold water, then repeat for 10 or so leaves.  Greens are especially dirty vegetables, and the whole process of chopping and washing took half an hour.

Next, I'd boil them for 10 minutes in a pot of water, press them out in the colander and them moisten with white vinegar from a gallon jug.  That was it.  They tasted fine, and I sought out more varieties.  Mustard greens have a nice spicy bite to them, and I settled on that as my preferred green. 

Greens are good for you.  They are full of fiber and vitamins, and myth has it that they mean money is coming.  Since I started eating greens, I've been able to afford the $3.49 a bag pre cut pre washed deal, make stock, and buy meat just to flavor a vegetable, so I think it's working.