Dark, Leafy Greens Are a Nutritious and Delicious Addition to Any Diet

Dark green, leafy vegetables are nutrient dense, high-fiber, low-calorie, fat-free, and flavorful additions to any diet. They are an excellent source of the minerals and vitamins our body needs for optimum health such as vitamins A, C, and K, D, E, folic acid, iron and calcium.

As healthy as dark green leafy vegetables are, they are not a big part of the average American diet. Restaurants serve and stores stores sell a standard selection of greens. Tasty yes, but boring. Bok choy, broccoli, dark green leafy lettuce, kale, mustard greens, romaine lettuce, spinach, turnip greens, and the like.

We can increase the amount of nutrition in our diet and at the same time, expose our palates to some exotic flavors. First let' s look at some novel ways to prepare our greens.

Leafy greens make great salads. Look beyond the tip of the iceberg to such greens as Romaine lettuce, spinach, Frisée (aka Curly endive, Belgian endive, Radicchio, Escarole, Butterhead Lettuce, Watercress, Oakleaf, Mâche, and Arugula.

The tastes range from sweet to bitter, peppery to buttery, fibrous to munchy. These greens all taste great when mixed in a salad with other vegetables, such as tomatoes, green or red peppers, radishes, cucumbers, onions, alfalfa, cauliflower, or carrots.

Salads you can hold in your hand :

Leafy greens make great wraps.
how about your favorite green leaf wrapped around steak strips, rice, green and red peppers in a corn tortilla.

Try a seafood wrap: cooked shrimp, leafy greens, crab legs, a sprinkle of lemon in a tortilla slathered with tartar sauce or sour cream.

Or how about about a veggie wrap with fried eggplant, toasted red peppers, provolone, Colby, and muenster cheeses ( or shredded Asiago, sliced mozzarella and fontina cheese ) .

Then there is the old standby, the stir-fry meal.

Try your stir-fry with marinated flank steak stir-fried with bok choy or your favorite greens, mushrooms, and red onion, dark soy, corn, bean sprouts, a little chopped garlic, fried in extra-virgin olive oil.

Now lets expand our palates some more. I recommend trying the following trio greens cooked down-home, soul-food style:

--collard greens
--sweet potato greens
-- poke salad

Collards are a staple of southern cuisine. If cooked right they are are delicious and nutritious. Here is my Aunt Neet's recipe for collards:

Ingredients:
2 pounds of collard greens
2 pieces fat back
2 teaspoonfuls sugar, salt

Wash your collards thoroughly, fold the leaves and chopped them up. You then boil the greens for at least 2 to 3 hours.. You pour off the water then add two slices of cooked fat back, crumbled. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar and some salt. Enjoy!

Another home- style green that you should try at least once is poke salad. Poke salad or Poke weed plants are native to North and South America, East Asia and New Zealand. The plants were used mainly for medicine, but if the leaves are carefully prepared, they can be quite tasty and nutritious. A word of caution: all parts of the Poke weed plant are toxic to mammals -- except in the early spring when the leaves are tender and before the berries have appeared. The consensus is that if the leaves are washed thoroughly, then boiled and rinsed 3 times, the levels of toxins in the leaves are reduced to tolerable levels.

Here is my Aunt Neet's Poke Salad recipe.

Ingredients:
2 lbs. poke leaves,
1 large bunch of green onions, roughly chopped
4 strips of fat back
onions
2 eggs

Make make sure the stems removed, the leaves washed and rinsed. Boil the leaves for no less than 2 hours, drain, strain, and press the liquid out of the greens. Pour the greens in to a large frying pan. Pour some oil over the greens. Add the onions, fat back and eggs and stir over medium heat.

You have not lived until you have tasted sweet potato greens. The sweet potato cultivated all over the world. While most of us are familiar with the sweet and tasty tuber, the leaves are nutritious, mild, and sweet after cooking. Some people find the taste to be similar to collard greens: others compare them to spinach.

Sweet potato leaves are high in protein. They contain dietary fiber, lipids, and essential minerals and nutrients such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium, sulfur, iron, copper, zinc, manganese, aluminum and boron. They are also a good source of vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and ascorbic acid.

Here is my sister-in-law's, Camile's recipe for potato greens.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of Sweet potato greens, washed, cut into bite-sized pieces
hot oil
3 or 4 smoked neck bones

Place the greens in boiling water for about 25 minutes. Drain the water. Heat up some oil in a frying pan and add the greens and neck bones. Fry in the oil until the leaves turn dark. Enjoy.

Leafy green vegetables vary greatly in taste and texture but they are all delicious and rich in nutrition. It is certainly worth your while to take a chance and try something new. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from expanding your palette beyond the mundane.