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Well, maybe not your kids, but this recipe will turn an unwilling adult into a mustard greens eater. The trick is not sugar (but that certainly helps) — the trick is lemon, or lime, or even orange juice.

I found this wonderful recipe on Pinterest — a useful way to browse the web. Quite frankly, I’m not going to type “mustard greens” into Google to see what I find, because I’m not that interested in mustard greens. But then I see someone has pinned a recipe with a note that says, “I must try this.” And I think why? So, I look at their pinboard and I dig down to the original website to see about the person whose recipe it really is. I end up finding very interesting people who have been working at their craft of cooking (in this case) and writing about it for years.

Personally, my only real interest in mustard greens is that I can grow them in my backyard. And I’m not going to dedicate any precious garden space to a crop that no one in the family except me will eat. It’s a plant picking problem. Sort of like a salary cap in football. I’m not going to pay lots of money to a player who is going to sit on the bench. I learned with swiss chard — beautiful, bright rainbow chard which can easily be used as a substitute in this recipe. I had a bountiful production of chard last year — only one of my sons enjoyed chard with me.

The crop selection limitations are severe at my house — beets are not permitted anywhere in the garden. One member of my family (who shall remain nameless) has a fear that the taste of beets will infect all the other vegetables in the garden. I think he is remembering those jellied, canned, tasteless bleeding-red beets his mother served him as a child. But, life is about compromise, so I don’t plant beets. But I might plant mustard greens, or maybe mustard reds.

I bought a bunch to taste at a local community farm — Whitelock Community Farm. The original recipe for Mustard Greens with Balsamic-Glazed Chickpeas can be found at the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.The only thing I changed in Susan Voisin’s recipe was to finish it with a squeeze of lemon juice. Oh, and I served it with grilled pork tenderloin.

Louise Erdrich tells a wonderful story.
Another one of her books that is a favorite of mine is The Master Butchers Singing Club.