Add a little soul to your table

I was at a party the other night where the theme of the meal was "Soul Food".

Well, we Sicilians must have more soul that I thought, because those dishes (not counting the delicious corn bread) were things that I grew up eating as a child. Of course I did grow up in the South where a lot of the cultures melded together  on our side of the tracks.

I skipped the ribs and the ham at the table, but there was plenty for me to eat. Black-eyed Peas, Peach Cobbler, Banana Pudding, Corn Bread and, of course, Collard Greens.

I almost skipped the greens because pretty much everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line knows that you have to cook greens with a hunk of some sort of meat to make it taste right. I looked in the crock pot and didn't see any flesh.

"You can eat that," Miss Rose, who had made the dish, said to me. "There's no meat in there."

She said that while she wasn't a vegetarian, she didn't add meat to dishes that didn't need it. And greens, she said, didn't need meat. They were good enough on their own.

You have to use organic greens, she warned, however. The ones that are sprayed with pesticides and stuff are too tough to cook up properly, she explained.

So, here's the secret recipe.

Miss Rose's Meatless Greens

3 quarts of water

1 big bunch of organic collard greens

1/4 cup of olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

• Wash the collard greens thoroughly.
• Remove the stems that run down the center by holding the leaf in your left hand and stripping the leaf down with your right hand. The tender young leaves in the heart of the collards don't need to be stripped.
• Stack 6 to 8 leaves on top of one another, roll up, and slice into 1/2 to 1-ince thick slices.
• Put the greens in the pot with boiling water and the olive oil and cover. Turn down to low and cook for an hour.

Vegan.