Dinner Diary

I've been busy the last few days working on my CEUs. I have to complete 10 continuing education hours each year to maintain my therapy license, which is up for renewal at the end of this month. It's a bit of a hassle now that I'm not employed in the field, but I think it's important to maintain my option (and ability) to practice, should I ever want or need it.

Anyhow, that has been taking some time, so no interesting pursuits at the moment. I did, however, prepare (and photograph) one of my first really southern food creations: turnip greens! I've cooked Swiss chard and kale before, but always in creative and ethnic dishes, not just a "mess o' greens". A friend gave me some turnip greens, and since we were snowed in most of last week, I relied upon them to fill in as our vegetable serving and round out the Beef Pizzaiola and garlic toast.

Let me just go on record as saying that any vegetable that has to be boiled down for that long and then sauteed in copious amounts of fat and seasoning to have any flavor, really shouldn't get any credit for being a veggie. Not a stand-alone one, anyhow! The dish was tolerable and added some nice color to the plate, but that is about all I can say for it.

I might pursue a collection of tasty (and healthy) recipes for turnip greens down the road, but for now I'll stick to its more exotic cousins in the form of my favorite Greek and Middle Eastern dishes.