Collard Green Salad

First, if you are not a fan of collard greens, stay with me.  I know a lot of people think they are a peculiar southern thing.  So, for those that think that, you could make this collard green salad with kale or your favorite green.  I am also going to give you some information about greens in general.  Collard greens are so good though, and extra good for you, so if you have not tried them, you definitely need to put them on your list.

This salad started with a trip to Whole Foods with my mother.  She was asking me about massaging my greens, which I had never heard of – and there isn’t much to do with food that I have not at least heard of.  Then walking around the store, we saw that they had marinated collard greens for sale, which sounded very interesting to me.  I didn’t try their’s as by that time, I already had way too much in my basket, so I don’t even know the general flavor.  Mine might be really different, but I chose what I thought would be good.  I do know that it had onions and red pepper in it because I could see them.  I left the onions out, because I really, really don’t like onions.  I liked the idea of red pepper with collard greens though, but I also wanted to include some of Steve’s home grown tomatoes, so I decided to leave the red to the tomatoes and use yellow peppers.  This actually came together rather quickly, but I would suggest making it a couple of hours before you plan to eat it, so that it has time to marinate sufficiently.

Now, back to massaging your greens.  I had never heard of this, but I looked it up.  And, sure enough, massaging your greens is a great idea. There is a great explanation at Eating Well.   Now, I am talking about coarse, bitter greens, not lettuce because what you are actually doing is wilting them, and you don’t want wiltly lettuce.  You just put some olive oil on them and massage them in until they are dark and soft.  It is almost as if you have cooked them a bit.  It also makes them a bit sweeter and easier to take up the flavor of the marinade.  In this recipe, all of the olive oil is added during the massage and the rest of the marinade is a just stirred into the greens.