Ask Mess Hall: Cast Iron Care, Freezing Your Greens, & More

Grab bag advice episode!

Happy Friday! I had meant to bring you the next Cookbook on a Budget installment this week, but life has, as they say, gotten in the way. I’ve been on a few deadlines and I’ve mostly been eating some ad-hoc chicken noodle soup and this amazing anchovy butter pasta. The latter is quite rich, so I’ve found that the best way to eat it and not have to lay down after is to pack a demure serving of leftover pasta into my bento box under a sea of breadcrumbs, along with two soft-boiled eggs and a heaping tongful of garlicky braised greens. Then I dress everything with a little splotch of this chili sauce. I carry my lunch to the place where I’ve been working and I don’t refrigerate it because that’s not an option, so once I dig into my pasta it has shaken off the stodgy chill of the fridge and loosened up a bit, and I do think this is the secret to eating leftover pasta. As a meal the whole thing feels wholesome and luscious, the ideal lunch, I stay full for the appropriate amount of time, I get back to work on the next great american cookbook review.

Anyways today I wanted to get through a few QUESTIONS I’ve received through the GOOGLE FORM you should be USING to send me your COOKING QUESTIONS.

What's the best way to freeze greens?

Last summer I began freezing greens in earnest, because I finally signed myself up for a CSA, and often had more greens than I could get through in a timely fashion. And as a freezer obsessive, I now think this is one of the most wonderful things you can keep in your freezer. A little bag or two of kale or chard or even turnip greens in the freezer can add a bit of nutrients/color/fiber/panache to the bowl of instant noodles you make after coming home from a trip because there’s nothing in the fridge. It can add the same to a bowl of beans; I recently added my last available handful to a pot of chicken soup. You could even turn them into pesto.