“Wild About Greens: 125 Delectable Vegan Recipes for Kale, Collards, Arugula, Bok Choy, and Other Leafy Veggies Everyone Loves”
By Nava Atlas; Sterling, 223 pages
Whenever I get stressed, my eating habits turn to the dark side. I try to fight through these weak moments, I really do, but more often than not I surrender to junk food. Salty, fatty foods full of empty calories sing a siren’s song to my stressed-out soul, beckoning me to indulge that french fry craving, that potato chip urge. If it’s true that the human body’s desire to consume and store fat can be traced back to prehistoric days when eating this way was crucial to survival, I am cavewoman, hear me roar!
As I get older, I am faced with the reality that the more I succumb to unhealthy food, the more my body objects. So, to help combat these junk food urges, I am checking out cookbooks that focus on using healthy ingredients such as greens. And Nava Atlas’s “Wild About Greens” is a fantastic greens cookbook.
Maybe you’re already a fan of leafy vegetables with hardy stalks, but I am slow to the table with this one. Without any real experience cooking with greens — or for that matter, eating them — I imagined anything leafy with tough stems would cook down into a slimy, inedible mess; or, would cook satisfactorily but taste awful. Perhaps this helps you to understand my reluctance to fully embrace Brassica oleracea and Beta vulgaris (species names for kale and Swiss chard, respectively).
