Antioxidant Alert! Collard Greens with Rice and Kielbasa

I've talked before about how some of the best recipes come from the most unassuming places. This one is a personal record for unassuming.

I spend a lot of time rooting through the various greens in the produce department of my grocery store. It's a habit that I seem to have unwittingly inherited from my father. Fortunately Laura not only tolerates it--she strongly encourages it. When you live with an eye doctor, you regularly hear health-related lectures about how an antioxidant-rich diet can protect you from things like macular degeneration and cataracts.

On this particular day, I struck green. I mean gold. Our local supermarket was selling 99c bunches of collard greens that were so enormous I had to use two hands to pick them up. You could feed a family on half a bunch.

And attached to the little wire tie that was tenuously holding this huge bunch of collards together was an unassuming little plastic label with an even more unassuming recipe on it. I could see the recipe would pass the Five Easy Questions Test and would be both laughably cheap and preposterously easy to make.

Sold! I brought the collards home with me. And today I’ll share that recipe with you.

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Collards with Rice and Kielbasa

Ingredients:
1 lb collard greens
1 cup rice
Several pieces of kielbasa or sausage, chopped into chunks
3 cups water
1 chicken bouillon cube
black pepper (or cayenne pepper) to taste

Directions:
1) Wash collard greens well, remove stems, and chop the leaves into medium size pieces.

2) Place all ingredients into a deep, non-stick saucepan, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serves 4-5
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A couple of brief closing notes:

1) This dish can be very easily reheated for lunches or leftovers using a microwave.

2) Here are the vegetarian options: replace the meat (duh) and add one can of kidney beans or pink beans, and use vegetable bouillon in place of the chicken bouillon cube. Then, replace one or two of the cups of water with liquid vegetable stock.

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