New Dish For The Rotation

I get a box of organic fruits and vegetables delivered to my house every two weeks. There's always some sort of green (chard, kale, collard, etc.). I discovered early on that whatever green you get, it tastes good cooked with bacon, onion and garlic so that's what I always do. The exception is mustard greens. I have no idea how to make those taste good. They taste like dirty weeds to me.

As I was watching Chopped's Lunch Ladies episode, I saw a new way to prepare greens. One of the ladies does Pasta Monday at her school because pasta is an inexpensive way to provide a very filling dish and some of her students don't get a lot to eat over the weekend. She had collard greens to work with and she sliced them into thin strips, added a bunch of other stuff and tossed in pasta. It looked delicious and the judges really liked it.

So, I picked up some penne at the store and waited for my next delivery. It came yesterday and included was green chard. I was good to go.

I cooked the diced onion and garlic with ground up hot Italian sausage and a shake or two of Italian spice mix then waited until the penne was nearly done. Then I put the strips of chard into my sausage mix and it only took a few minutes to cook it down. The sausage had enough fat to coat everything nicely without being too greasy. I then folded in the penne (no rinsing) and, voila, it was done.

Delish! I had it for dinner last night and leftovers for lunch today. Still yummy.

Good stuff

I should have taken a picture of how it looked on the plate last night. Much prettier. I also put a little bit of dried parmeson on it and that was a nice finishing touch. 

If you haven't watched the Chopped Lunch Ladies episode, you really should. It was eye-opening to see the challenges they face trying to work with the food they're given (they don't always have a lot of leeway) while providing a healthy, low cost meal to their students. It's much easier to go low cost if you're willing to skimp on nutrition and taste but those women weren't willing to do that. Very inspirational.

It was also eye-opening to hear about how many of their students are on food assistance programs. We're not doing a very good job of properly feeding our youth. Heck, I don't think we're doing a very good job at feeding a lot of our citizens.