Red beans and rice, not black, but at least brown, with Andouille sausage. I did consider using black rice but it didnt fit the sudden schedule, and it would have hidden the red and green Christmas colors. I added a healthy dose of live collards, the only thing left alive in the veggie garden. Collards like other greens are even sweeter after the gentle kiss of the frost
eat your heart out folks without that winter gardening pleasure and advantage!
These particular Collard plants are now two years old. I planted new ones in the spring but some dastardly Vegan bugs ate all my bedding plants. I rushed around looking for more plants but they were sold out.. Considering a year without collards, I figured my only chance was to encourage the remaining plants, they usually live through winter here now, to produce more leaves. The plants had spring fever and were blooming very enthusiastically, thinking that it would be their only chance to breed and sow wild oats. Every sprout, and there were hundreds, had clusters of bright yellow flowers but had stopped growing leaves. I pruned all the flowers, which are delicious eaten right in the garden or used like any other green. They kept trying to flower but I purrsisted in deflowering them. I fed them high nitrogen lawn fertilizer, without weed killer, that was leftover from when I used to feed the lawn. High nitrogen encourages leaf growth, and I didnt want more Potassium or Phosphate as they already had good root systems, and were not going to produce fruit. They came back with lush growth, but instead of being upright as usual, they crawled snakelike all around the plot putting out more collards than I could eat, and they are still going strong. I think I will try to get another year out of them, with severe contraception!
TAT
