The Thanksgiving Greens

Shopping for Thanksgiving dinner I came across collard greens. It’s not something that I have ever made nor is it my favorite dish. However, since my son-in-law Sean has joined the family I’m trying to be sensitive to his cultural traditions. Coming from a southern state is not so foreign to me since I grew up with Southern cooking – corn bread, fried fish, biscuits and gravy. But Sean has also made our family multi-cultural. I knew He likes collard greens but they are out of my league.

Buying two large batches of collard greens, salt pork, onions and fresh garlic I finished shopping and headed home. After unloading all the groceries I quickly connected to the internet to get a selection of recipes and to see how to prepare the greens. I had no idea what I was getting into.

After cleaning and bleaching the sink, I ran cold water over every leaf and let it sit in the water while I prepared the salt pork, diced the onions and garlic. Then I swished each leaf in the water and ran cold water over each leaf again to remove any grit. I let the greens soak again as I put the salt pork on to slowly fry with the onions and garlic. Then I rinsed the leaves and put them in the colander to drain while I started on the second batch of greens repeating the cleansing, rinsing procedure. This was taking much longer than I had expected.

After turning the ingredients in the frying pan a few times I proceeded to de-vain the leafy collard greens. Taking my sharp paring knife I traced along each side of the main vein excising the nasty, hard thing. Wanting to make the greens just right according to internet instructions, I proceeded to cut out any and all veins on each side of the leaf. I know those of you who are experienced at this are laughing at me – but I wanted to do it right. After finishing the first batch my right index finger was registering pain and screaming “what do you think you’re doing, give me a break.” So, I did.

I put the salt pork into a few quarts of water with the onions and garlic and added some crushed red pepper – Edie said that it needed something “hot.” Then I decided to call Edie to complain about how long this was taking. I hoped she had appreciated the hard work her Mother had done to produce a regular helping of greens for the family. As I told her what I was doing, she laughed out loud. I really didn’t think it was that funny, but she informed me that she had by passed all that work and bought her greens already cleaned, de-veined and chopped in a bag at Acme. “So now you tell me! That would have been some pretty important information to have had a couple of hours earlier” I told her. More laughter.

After our conversation I sat back down with the next batch of greens to spend another hour loving on my son-in-law Sean and praying that my first batch of greens would be worthy of him. Amazingly, those two large batches of greens rendered a quart of cooked greens. All that work for such a small amount of food was unbelievable.

During this whole process I told the Lord that this was my offering of worship to Him and of love to Sean – His child. Romans 12:1 in The Message tells us “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.”

I had worshiped in more ways than one. I had helped to bring a slice of home and tradition into the life of one of God’s children. I had risked failure and a waste of precious time. But I had spent the time well -- time alone with greens and a knife to pray for whoever came to mind and to give thanks for the many blessings of the year. I guess you could say it was my Thanksgiving Greens.

I wish you could have seen the delight on Sean’s face when he uncovered the greens and the relief in me when he declared them “good.” I noticed that he had a few helpings so I guess they were an acceptable offering. I thought they tasted pretty good, but who am I to judge?

As I look back at the Thanksgivings of years past, the faces at the table have changed. Some have passed on, some are married and with their own families; but there has been one constant tradition – turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, cole slaw and home made rolls. Now as children have been added so are the Thanksgiving greens. Who knows what will be next…