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it is finally that time of year when cool season leafy green crops are coming in waves again. but, even as a mainly herbivorous minded eater, i can only tolerate so many salads. luckily, i have a diffusion process that i call quiche eating. my garden is still inundated with rainbow colored stalks of swiss chard, kale, and spinach. these plants are cold hearty and can tolerate temperatures as low as fifteen degrees which is great news for my belly and lucrative for local farmers. i work with and for farmers- greens are never lacking in my kitchen. while my original recipe is made with spinach, i have been experimenting with the other green things that seem to be reproducing up here in growing zone 6b! think turnip greens, beet greens, and kohlrabi greens. this recipe is versatile and lends itself to experimentation which is one reason that it has been part of my repertoire for a decade.
In my never-ending quest to avoid refined carbohydrates, I’ve come across a few tasty, healthier alternatives- one of them is brown rice pasta. Brown rice pasta cooks differently than regular- it takes twice as long, and often produces excessive amounts of starch in the form of cloudy, bubbly water. This water often overflows from the pot, and is a mess to clean up. Tonight I experimented with cooking the pasta twice. I started with a pound of brown rice pasta. The pasta was placed in a large pot of salted, boiling water, cooked for 4 minutes, then drained. I then re-boiled the pasta in a fresh pot of water for 5 minutes. The end result was a less-starchy product. Try this procedure when cooking brown rice pasta- cooking times may vary depending on pasta shapes.