Preparing for the Future

Today, I finally found the time to deal with all the greens from my vegetable share. The CSA farmer who provides our locally grown produce plants a wide variety of greens every winter. Just this week alone we had English cress, new star mustard, tender leaf mustard, and Chinese thick-stemmed mustard. Left from last week, I had napini, two kinds of kale, and a bunch of spicy arugula.

Sometimes, I cook to showcase the individuality of a particular green, but today I did what I always do when I'm inundated: I got out the ten quart stock pot, boiled some lightly-salted water, and dumped them all in. Four minutes later the leaves floated to the top like tiny emerald dishrags. The window by the sink clouded with steam as I drained them and then shocked them in ice water. Once they were cool, I lifted them from their icy bath and back into the colander, leaving behind the last of the gritty sand that had given them life.

The most labor intensive step came next. Working in batches small enough to fit my hands, I squeezed the water from them and tossed around 10 compact green balls to my cutting board. After that it was a rough chop chop with the chef's knife and into a zipper bag-- one pound and fifteen ounces of green goodness bound for the freezer and some future meal. 

As I worked, I was reminded of a wonderful poem by Todd Boss: (Be sure to check out his very cool project, Motion Poems.)

Were I to Wring a Rag

--no matter how much
muscle I might have   

mustered—my mother   

was like to come along   

behind, reach around   

me to take it up again   

from where I’d left it,   

lift it back into my line   

of vision and in one   

practiced motion from   

that strangle in her bare   

hands and thin air work   

a second miraculous   

stream of silver dishwash   

into the day’s last gleam . . .

~Todd Boss

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the SOLSC challenge.)