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WEEK 15 - BLOG CHALLENGE - Collard Greens.

Well this is the last week of this blog challenge, and it is timely - at the end of the year, just before Christmas. So one last time to sneek some healthy greens into your diet amongst the sweets and turkey! The easiest thing to do is to just add the greens into your salad. My favorite salads are ones with mixed greens, or you can be more decadent and cook them with bacon. Since these greens are so tough, I find the easiest way to introduce them into your diet is to make a green smoothie. For those who have a hard time eating vegetables - try drinking them instead! Mix the greens with some citrus fruit or berries and anything will taste great.

I do recommend adding them to your diet as they are such a super food of nutrients. First of all, collards are high in fibre and protein. You wouldn't expect a green vegetable to pack such a protein punch with 4 g protein per cup. They are also an excellent source of Vitamin A, C and K, calcium and iron. Research proves that collards have more calcium than milk. According to Alisa Flemming of Nutriton Headlines, that only applies if the collards are cooked! 1 cup of cooked collards has 357 mg of calcium compared to milk, but 1 cup of raw collards only has 52 mg of calcium. This is partly due to the greens shrinking when heated, meaning you need more quantity of greens to equal 1 full cup.

Calcium isn't the only nutrient needed for good bone health. Vitamin K plays a role in regulating bone formation, and those with low bone density are usually low in vitamin K! One cup of cooked collards will give you 858% of your daily required amount of vitamin K. So collards are an excellent food for bone health.

Pastel drawing.

I love drawing any leaf. The veins of collards remind me of tree branches, they are very distinct. Some leaf veins are very subtle, but these ones are bold. The back sides of collard greens are a silvery green color, so it made a nice contrast to draw one collard from the front and the other on the backside. The outer edges with the curled lip and rips also add visual interest to draw. When drawing a form that is one colour, it is key to emphasize the subtle shift changes in colour, from the cool purple greens for shadows to the yellow greens for highlights. This helps add dimension to the forms.

Collard Greens with Bacon.docx

How to get started...
1) Introduce collards into your diet this week. Use the recipe provided or find your own. You can even use collard greens for wraps. I try to offer the simplest recipes with the fewest ingredients to encourage simplicity.

2) Since collards are very large leaves with raised veins, they would make a good rubbing. Remember the days when you were a kid, and you would collect leaves, then make rubbings of them. Take a piece of thin, computer paper and lay it over a collard leaf. Use a wax crayon or pencil crayon, and colour over top to get the texture rubbing of the leaf. It's that simple. Don't forget to photograph it.

Keep it simple and have fun and submit your 'creations' to me at lynnldallaire@gmail.com.