Welcome to the new format of The Vegan Atlas newsletter. I just switched to Substack! For new subscribers, here’s your promised perk: A 33-page pdf filled with handy tips, Setting Up Your Plant-Based Kitchen.
One thing I haven’t been very good at is saying more about myself. I’m a pretty private person, and TBH, a little shy. On one hand, fighting climate change, improving health, and having compassion for animals isn’t about me. On the other, I do want readers to know me as a person, just as I want to learn what topics you’d like me to present in this publication. So please do let me know!
Just the basics for now; I’m a writer, cookbook author, graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist specializing in limited editions. I’m a “woman of a certain age” with two beloved adult children. I live in the Hudson Valley region of New York State and I love to cook (obviously), read, travel (I’m obsessed with Iceland), and am a huge (actually very petite) nerd. In future newsletters I’ll try to be forthcoming about where I am, what I’m writing and creating, and most of all, what I’m cooking (or making uncooked!).
Now, onto the subject at hand. By now, most of us know that we should be eating lots of leafy greens. Sometimes, that’s easier said than done. Here are some easy ways to eat more leafy greens, with tips, ideas, and links to recipes.
The benefits of leafy greens
Greens are the most nutrient-rich vegetable group, with a multitude of benefits.
Leafy greens are good sources of Vitamin K, essential to bone health, and are abundant in vitamins A, B (especially folic acid) and C. Greens also provide a wealth of antioxidants and chlorophyll.
The hardier greens, like kale, chard, and collards, are superb sources of highly absorbable calcium, a perk that’s especially valuable to vegans.
All of these are great reasons to eat more greens, aside from the fact that they’re delicious, versatile, and add interest to all manner of preparations.
Use “massaged” kale in salads
Kale and Cucumber Salad with Avocado Tahini Dressing
Let’s face it … raw kale in salads can feel like you’re trying to eat your lawn. But massaging it until it softens greatly improves its mouth feel. Here’s how:
Strip rinsed kale leaves from their stems and chop them into bite-size pieces. Make sure the kale isn’t too wet before starting; use a salad spinner if you’d like.
Place the cut kale into a serving bowl. Rub a little olive oil into your palm, then massage the kale for 45 seconds to a minute. It will soften up and turn bright green. To this, you can add all manner of other veggies and fruits, and dress any way you’d like.
Find lots more kale salads and other ways to use kale here. Here’s an expanded tutorial on how to massage kale, with some additional tips.
Add hardy greens to stir-fries and skillets
Stir-Fried Collard Greens and Cabbage
The best greens to use for this purpose are lacinato (or “dinosaur,” a flat-leaf variety) kale, collards, or chard.
Strip the leaves from the stems (you can slice the stems from the kale and chard very thinly and use them again. Stack a few leaves atop one another and roll up snugly from a narrow end. Slice very thinly.
This will make long, thin ribbons; cut them once or twice across to shorten. Add these toward the end of your veggie stir-fries, as they cook pretty quickly this way.
Collards blend well with all kinds of veggies that you’d usually use in stir-fries—broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, bok choy (itself a leafy green), asparagus, green beans, etc.
Use greens in smoothies and juices
Some greens are better for this purpose than others. Spinach tastes so mild in smoothies and juices that your taste buds barely know it’s there. Greens blend well with bananas, apples, berries, and pears.
Kale and collards are a bit more assertive but add a mild green flavor to smoothies and juices. For either juices or smoothies, a big handful or two of spinach or one or two good-size kale or collard leaves per servings is about right. Here are a couple more:
Use plenty of tender leafy greens in salads
Watercress Salad with Oranges and Cucumber
Granted, this isn’t a revolutionary idea, but look beyond lettuce to create invigorating warm-season salads.
Use lots of peppery watercress (a nutritional superstar), baby bok choy, tender dandelion greens, tatsoi, and mizuna (the latter two are Japanese greens that have become increasingly available at farm markets and CSAs).
Combine with baby green and sprouts, plus your favorite salad veggies and fruits, for cleansing (and clean-tasting) salads. Get more recipes and ideas:
Learn to love the bitter greens
Escarole Soup with White Beans and Potatoes
Add variety to your greens repertoire by getting to know escarole, broccoli rabe, and mustard greens. These greens mellow out considerably with gentle braising or when incorporated into soups and stews.
A basic garlicky bitter greens sauté: You can swap any of the above mentioned bitter greens into this recipe for Sautéed Broccoli Rabe with Garlic and Pine Nuts.
Incorporate greens into dips & pesto
Avocado, Spinach, and Tahini Dip
Wilted down lightly, it’s amazing how much green goodness you can incorporate into dips. One of my absolute favorites is the dip shown above. shown above. A couple of greens-packed pesto recipes: Arugula Pesto; you can also make a delicious kale pesto for pasta dishes like Kale Pesto Pasta with Mushroom “Bacon.”
Add greens to roasted vegetables
Roasted Collard Greens with Brussels Sprouts & Polenta
Adding some greens into a pan of roasted vegetables is an easy way to get more goodness into an already great veggie preparation.
There’s not much to this — just add some ribbons of kale (any variety), collard greens, or chard to your roasted vegetables in the last 10 minutes of baking time. Greens are great with roasted winter squashes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, roots, Brussels sprouts, beets, or any combination thereof.
One more … I’ve reached the length limit allowed for this newsletter, but I want to add one more great idea! Especially when my family belonged to a CSA and the fridge was packed with greens that needed to be used up, my go-to was Vegan Cream of Leafy Greens Soup. A fantastic way to use a surplus! Until next time …
Katherine, you can print recipes directly from the recipe cards in original post on The Vegan Atlas website. This was my first Substack newsletter so I didn't make that clear enough. If you let me know which recipes you'd like to print, I can send you those URLs and you can hit the "jump to recipe" arrow to go directly to the printable recipe.
Anyway to print recipies once subscribed?