Spicy Mustard Greens and Sausage

Have you liked Bariatric Foodie on Facebook yet? If you had, you would have seen that I posted about trying this new recipe yesterday!

This adventure all started at the farmer's market. It's a place of inspiration! Do you go? 

Anyway, I try to commit to trying new things when I see them and this day I saw a bag of spicy mustard greens. I like spicy stuff so I decided to give it a whirl. Now...I have experience with collard greens and kale but not mustard greens. So my first step was to taste one: raw and straight up.

It lives up to its name. It is spicy and tastes like mustard. And that's all I have to say about that.

From there, I went about finding a recipe I could use to cook it. This recipe seemed to fit the bill and it is what I used! 

Verdict: YUMMY! The Cajun flavor came through and man! My body must have been missing green, leafy veggies because my pouch actually sighed in happiness. Word to the wise: if you try any variation of this recipe, add the tomatoes dead last. The freshness and firmness of the tomato will play nicely against the salty/spice of the sausage. The recipe called for cherry tomatoes but I had romas so that's what I used. When they are in season, though, I'd even advocate for heirlooms for a bit of sweetness.

Some ideas on making this dish a bit more WLS-friendly:

• While the Andouille sausage was wonderful, I could totally see this going with some low-fat turkey smoked sausage and being fine, especially since you have to add Cajun spices
• If you've never worked with kale or mustard greens before, remove the big stem. It is not pouch-friendly.
• If you aren't yet cleared for such a hearty green, I think baby spinach would work well, it's just tricky to make it "al dente" if you will. Spinach gets mushy fast. But luckily it also absorbs flavor really fast so I don't think the preparation would change so much as you just would not simmer quite as long. 
• Not related to health but a random thought: I should have known this but leafy greens of any kind produce a LOT of liquid, especially when you add salt (which draws the liquid out of foods). Although the instructions don't say to do this, unless you want soup, take the lid off the pot the last 10 minutes or so.

I did not feed this to the divas. They were in the mood for Zatarain's jambalaya (if you ever are...here is a much more "us-friendly" recipe) and as I have said many times, rice and I don't get down like that. But it was a quick and easy dinner for them and this was a quick and easy dinner for me and we all managed to have Cajun food together. Winning, right?

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