Collard Greens - Made with Yankee love and pig parts

My Yankee tendencies came out big time today! I really am not a foodie anyway. Nothing like trying to do some deep southern cooking for the first time to snap you back to your roots.It was not too bad, just in the beginning, I was all wrong with my personal challenge to make a true southern dish. Collard greens. You see, I started my venture with this simple list:

• Collard greens
• Pigs feet

All wrong! (damn Yankee) I had it in my head that pigs feet is what I should cook with the greens. I was quickly notified by a couple I was chatting with at a local park that you cook Collard greens with Ham Hocks and Neck Bones. Say What!??

I first had to consult the above chart to see what part of the pig was the hock. The neck bone part was pretty much self explanatory, Needless to say,I was very happy to see and learn that the hock was far away from the rear end. So I set out on my mission.

And I adjusted my list:

• Collard Greens
• Ham Hocks
• Neck Bone
• Sugar
• Pepper

I got really lucky at the local farmers market. I met Fred and Kevin Sherman, a father and son team that happened to be selling Collard greens along with many other items. The Sherman's are from Thommasville Georgia. Fred was a very happy man, watching his son attend to the booth and conduct business while he spent some time giving me a great education on the proper preparation for collard greens.





First: Find the best greens available:



Check!

Then, Fred takes time out of his busy day and teaches me the best way to cut the greens.







Check!

Fred says you can’t have Collard greens with out Cornbread. Cornbread from scratch. So in my best Yankee tone I said, “oh you mean from the box?”




At that point Fred and Kevin looked at me and knew right away I “aint from round these parts” NO, said Fred, with Flower. I told him, for me, that is a totally whole new blog topic and that I needed to put all my energy into the task At hand-Collard greens.

Next: where do I find Ham Hocks and Neck Bones? Now, just for a moment, close your eyes and picture yourself in the middle of a big city, say Boston or New York. I mean the middle - traffic everywhere people hustling and bustling. Think of how it would be that in the middle of this, you go up to a random stranger and ask for the best place to buy Ham Hocks and Neck Bones. I would expect a look similar to this:



Here, any store will carry them. So I go local:



Macks meat store has been around these parts for a very loooong time. It made my day to ask, for the first time in my life- "Can you please tell me where your ham hocks and neck bones are?"

So, I get home and display my bounty like a true hunter, gatherer.



Ready to cook:



Cooking:



The finished product:



Wow! fantastic! These Collards rock baby! I just need to know what to do now with all these Ham Hocks and Neck Bones..I certainly am no going to eat THEM! or maybe.....I should at least try one?......nah.

My apologies to my wife AJ, my mother in law Muriel and to Burt up above for this topic and the use of pig parts in my ingredients. They are Jewish and can only watch from afar.



According to Jewish law, pork is one of a number of foods forbidden from consumption by Jews. These foods are known as "non-kosher" foods. In order for a meat to be kosher, it must first come from a kosher animal. A kosher animal must be a ruminant and have split hooves - therefore cows, sheep, goats and deer are all kosher, whereas camels and pigs (having each only one sign of kashrut) are not kosher.

I had a fantastic time learning about and cooking Collard greens today. I feel a little more southern after this, but think I may need to take the family out for some Brisket, gefilte fish and matza to make us all happy.

Oye!

In a New York and Crawfordville state of mind ~ Apples and Oranges:

I get conflicted many times when I think of the city and the rural south. I do so much miss the city with all it has to offer and the adrenalin rush that comes with it. Then I think of Crawfordville and how much of a family town it is and a great place to live and do things like gardening, sightseeing and some other things that I really can't think of right this minute :)

I though I would do a fun comparison of New York City and my current home town, Crawfordville, Florida. Here it goes and please keep in mind that most of these comparisons has my tongue firmly placed in my cheek:

Songs dedicated to the city

New York

The ever popular Frank Sinatra (Ole blue eye) singing, NY NY



Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
And make a brand new start of it
New York, New York

How about a little more modern with Jayz’s Empire state of mind:



In New York,
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
Theres nothing you can’t do,
Now you’re in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
The lights will inspire you,
Lets here it for New York, New York, New York

To name a few…

Crawfordville

I could not find any songs dedicated to Crawfordville, now, that does not mean there are none, only that none have been published, yet? Although I did not find a song about Crawfordville, I will submit to you the closest thing I could find to a singing group that is associated with the neighboring town of sopchoppy, I give you the group - Swamp Cabbage



Swamp Cabbage play a type of North Florida fatback boogaloo blues (love that word fatback) - Fatback is a cut of meat from a pig. It consists of the layer of adipose tissue (subcutaneous fat) under the skin of the back, with or without the skin (pork rind). Fatback often is rendered to make a high quality lard. Yum! ;)


Night life

New York



The city that never sleeps.

Crawfordville



The city that sleeps

I have never been out in the Crawfordville night life because frankly, I do not think we have one. So for this post I googled "Crawfordville night life” and came up with "Capt Seanile's Pool and Pub"‎. No photographs of the place were available and I don’t even know if they are still open for business. So I called and went to a voice mail recording- I left a message asking for the establishment's hours of operation, still waiting for a call back - sounds like a hoping place though.

Wildlife:

New York



Need I say more (and no the Zoo does not count)

Crawfordville

Here is where Crawfordville Shines:







That is just a small taste of the critters "round" here :)

Street/Road side vendors

New York



Classic street vendor dawgs/sausage/pretzels etc…..

Crawfordville:

Crawfordville has a lot to offer here:



Meet Woody:



Woody sells such down home items as:







Woody comes with an extra feature - conversation.

Public Transportation:

New York:







Crawfordville



Healthier?

Crawfordville public transportation may be slower. But I don't think we would meet this guy in our travels:



Fine Dining:

New York





Crawfordville



OUZTS TOO OYSTER BAR

Last but not least...................


Status Symbols:

New York:


Classic


Crawfordville


I think the higher the truck the more important you are?


There are many more things I could compare but this is a start. In the end, I love both places although it is like comparing apples and oranges, Big apples that is :)

Cranberries and Cotton

Driving by a cotton field for the first time down south I had to stop the car and get out to touch and feel the cotton flower. The sea of white cotton was stunning and seeing a cotton field was a very thought provoking moment for me. So much history.Up north we learned two thing about cotton: 1) Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and 2) with this invention the South became more dependent on slaves and plantations. Oh and a song we would hear from time to time.

When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In those old cotton fields back home
When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In those old cotton fields back home

Oh, when those cotton ball get rotten
You can't pick very much cotton
In them old cotton fields back home
It was back in Louisiana
Just about a mile from Texarkana
In them old cotton fields back home



(wikipedia) The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth of the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. The growth of cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. By 1860 the United States' South was providing eighty percent of Great Britain’s cotton and also providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton.

Cotton had formerly required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds; the cotton gin revolutionized the process. With Eli Whitney’s introduction of “teeth” in his cotton gin to comb out the cotton and separate the seeds, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South. New Orleans and Galveston were shipping points that derived substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South.


I am sure you can imagine with the history of this soft fluffy fiber, it would be intense seeing it up close for the first time. I even gathered a few shrubs and took them home as a souvenir. They still sit atop one of our bookcases in the living room. I might add that they have since perfected even more the harvesting of cotton:




Now about cranberries:



My home state of Massachusetts was once a thriving cranberry producer and while growing up, I had the opportunity to work in a cranberry cannery for the ocean spray company. I was lucky I did not have to work on the bog.

But instead worked indoors where they made cranberry sauce.



They first would harvest the little red berries in a bog, ship them to the cannery and move them to huge cooking vats. As you can imagine, this process could also include little critters that were living in the bogs, like frogs. I will always remember the lead sauce cook exclaim jokingly, this can contains at least one frog leg :)



My first job was to put the empty cans on the assembly line so they could fill up with the sauce down the line and then be moved to large refrigerators to be frozen. Sounds easy? Picture that Lucile ball bit where she is trying to keep up with a chocolate Assembly line,


that was me.

Cranberries really don't compare to cotton when it comes to American history and such, but via wikipedia, I will submit to you a little cranberry history:

The name cranberry derives from "craneberry", first named by early European settlers in America who felt the expanding flower, stem, calyx, and petals resembled the neck, head, and bill of a crane. Another name used in northeastern Canada is mossberry. The traditional English name for Vaccinium oxycoccos, fenberry, originated from plants found growing in fen (marsh) lands.

In North America, Native Americans were the first to use cranberries as food. Native Americans used cranberries in a variety of foods, especially for pemmican, wound medicine and dye. Calling the red berries Sassamanash, natives may have introduced cranberries to starving English settlers in Massachusetts who incorporated the berries into traditional Thanksgiving feasts.American Revolutionary War veteran Henry Hall is credited as first to farm cranberries in the Cape Cod town of Dennis around 1816. In the 1820s cranberries were shipped to Europe.[5] Cranberries became popular for wild harvesting in the Nordic countries and Russia. In Scotland, the berries were originally wild-harvested but with the loss of suitable habitat.

I do remember “stringing" cranberries for Christmas ornaments. You cant really do that with cotton.

Concrete Jungle

Now you have to realize that I have spent the majority of my life in a concrete jungle. The only nature we would see would be the occasional plants that may decorate a medium strip in my home town.



In the inner city, you have no trees, no plants or flowers and no animal wildlife. We have our share of human wildlife, but I will save that for another post. I remember the occasional trip to the Boston Common. There we could see some color and what a contrast from the traffic, triple deckers and poles that made up my hometown.

This would be the type of garden we would have on our front stoop at home:



Trees in the city have a city purpose, where else can we put the yellow caution tape?



Or how about a night walk to experience nature at it's best, if you look closely down this street, you will see a tree at the end of the road:



Now down here, my senses are out of control. I am not a flowery type of guy, but the sight and smells of the different flowers, plants and trees has my mind confused. (My wife says that’s not hard). The smells reminded me of walking into a Yankee candle store up east, " some of the candle "flavors" were so very foreign to me.

Experiancing the flowers down South, I had the same expression I have for most of my new encounters here…What the ……is that?

Take this flower, the Southern Magnolia. Now this flower is tough and feels like leather, in bloom it looks fantastic.



On any dirt road down south you can see azaleas bursting out!



Or you can't talk about the south without mentioning Spanish moss!



Or the ever popular palm trees:



Nothing like a stroll at the beach down here with these as a backdrop!

Geesh! I do sound a little flowery here…let me put in a “man plant” so I can feel better.

I give you the pitcher plant:


Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid known as a pitfall trap. It has been widely assumed that the various sorts of pitfall trap evolved from rolled leaves, with selection pressure favouring more deeply cupped leaves over evolutionary time. However, some pitcher plant genera (such as Nepenthes) are placed within clades consisting mostly of flypaper traps: this indicates that this view may be too simplistic, and some pitchers may have evolved from flypaper traps by loss of mucilage.

Pitcher plants are not indigenous to the south, I just feel a whole lot better posting it here.

With all this yammering about the South and the beautiful flora, I must say that I do miss the trips I use to take as a kid up north to look at the foliage:



I don't see this down here.