Random Recipe

So...a couple years ago, my wife, being from texas and all, was longing for some southern food on her birthday. Myself, being a native Californian hippy-type, didn't know a thing about southern food, but Google is my b****, and so soon I did. Tremendous success with smothered pork chops + collard greens. However, in the years since, I've only made the smothered pork chops again once (normal-ish recipe, but the mustard in the gravy is essential)...but my strange take on greens has become a weekly dish, now that we're living next to (across the street, maybe 100 yards from) a weekly farmer's market. I doubt that any true-blue southern gourmands will prefer my version to authentic greens, but ... here's my current favorite:

• 1 bunch greens of some sort (Collard, Turnip, Mustard, Beet, Swiss Chard, Kale, etc.)
• 1 bunch greens of some other sort (same list)
• 1 bunch spinach
• 4 thick slices of bacon (preferred), or some other fatty, salty meat. Ham? Sausage? May require additional oil (olive) if it ain't bacon.
  
• 1/2 medium onion
• Tbsp chopped garlic (to taste)
• water
• 1/2 cup (or more) moderately interesting vinegar (red wine, usually, or apple cider)
• water
  
• optional -- red pepper flakes
• optional -- honey.

Steps:

1. Rinse the heck out of the greens/spinach. They always have sand/dirt in them. LOTS of sand/dirt. Rinse a lot.
   
2. Concurrently with steps 4-6, stem all the greens. Most greens have long, thick stems, that do not belong in the dish. We feed them to our chickens or guinea pig.
3. Chop or tear the big thick leaves of the greens.
   
4. Fry bacon in soup pot.
   
5. Throw onions in soon, after a little bacon grease is liquid.
6. Throw garlic in after onions start to clarify
7. Once the bacon is edible...pull it out, chop it, throw it back in.
8. Throw all the rinsed, stemmed, chopped greens in the pot.
9. Pour in the vinegar (you can add more later to taste)
10. Pour in 1 cup of water.
11. Cover, simmer for 15 minutes.
12. Taste.
    
13. Optionally, add red pepper flakes, more vinegar, up to 2Tbsp of honey to cover the bitter of the greens as desired
14. if there's not much water in the bottom of the pan, add more (another cup -- doesn't take much precision).
15. Depending on desired consistency/tenderness, simmer for up to another hour (for collard greens this is especially a good idea), adding water as necessary.
16. 10 minutes before completion, add spinach, mix well. Optionally, add this early...it doesn't make much difference.
    
17. Eat

I had this with grilled sausage and onions this evening. Excellent, as it is most weeks.

Most likely failure states?

1. Insufficient rinsing of the greens/spinach. Eating sand sucks.
   
2. Not using/re-using step 12 (with 5-min interval, and mixing) to get the mix of vinegar/honey/spice you want. Some folks will find the honey and/or flakes unnecesary. Others will require one or both. How vinegar-y is also massively variable by preference.
   
3. Forgetting to check the pan regularly on step 15, thus letting the water boil off on a longer cook that is not well-covered.
4. Burning the bacon/onions on steps 4-6.
   

It's almost honest-to goodness Southern US cookin'. Mix it up with some cornbread or cornbread muffins (must have kernel corn inside, also optionally jalepenos or blueberries, but not both), and some fried catfish, fried chicken, pork chops, or pulled pork, and you got yourself a meal.