I saute spinach in a little olive oil adding garlic & red pepper flakes until just wilted.
That way they are fresh tasting and still very green.

Linda

Personally.... I toss that whole page! If you cooked most of these vegetables as long as recommended there'd be no food value left.... and not much of the vegetable left either. I think you need to look for a new, more up-to-date list.

When I make spinach: I bring a little butter to a sizzle, add the washed spinach, sprinkle with a little sugar and pepper, toss and out of the pan it comes straight to the waiting plates. (Sometimes I dice some green onions that I sauteé briefly before adding the spinach.)

You're kidding, of course???
Spinach gets cooked maybe 2 minutes....corn no more that 3, green beans 5 or 6.
Did people ever really cook like that??
Yeah...probably....and that's why veggies got such a bad rap.
Linda C

My grandmother (born Jan. 1900), cooked much like that. Remember that spinach wasn't the baby spinach we get now; it was home grown and often big and maybe a little tough.

Pretty much all greens were cooked the same way: wash the greens and pull out the tough stems, then shake off most of the water. Put a spoonful of bacon dripping in the pot, and then pile in a huge batch of greens. Salt well, cover, and cook very, very slowly. She always told me never to add water to the pot, just cook the greens in the water left clinging to the leaves.

So the pot might be on the fire an hour or two, but it wasn't boiling away swimming in water all that time.

Now, I don't cook my greens that way any more, but I still daydream about that taste--and that "pot likker." :)

LOL! I so agree with Linda about the bad rap and people not liking veggies. When I started dating my husband he said he would only eat corn and green beans. I said NO WAY in my house. I began to cook for him and making lots of different veges. Guess what??? He liked them. The reason why - because I didn't cook them to mush like his Mom did.

I will never forget the first time his mom came to stay with us and she could not believe that he was eating broccoli, squash, zucch, etc. He told her point blank that he liked my cooking better and that she cooked veges. to mush. She said she liked them that way and that was the way that the rest of the family was to eat them. Boy, I tried to stay out of that little tiff.

It did not go over well with her. I told my husband you don't say those things to your Mom:)

Fori....lol. That is really funny. I particularly like the beet one... one to FIVE hours... lol.

OK, I admit I haven't tried cooking like this! I was looking at some very old recipes in a scrapbook I have and saw this. The scrapbook dates from about 1895-1915 and I don't know when this horrific bit of advice came from but it made me laugh. (Not that I'd have a clue what to do with a beet, so I can kind of understand why the article was clipped!)

My spouse and I are both from California, born in the early 70s, so you'd think we both grew up on fresh veggies. Well, I did, but his dad worked at a vegetable cannery so he was raised on canned stuff! Sort of like having mom's cooking being overdone. It was very easy to convince him fresh (or frozen) are good. Heck, even his dad doesn't eat canned veggies now that he's retired. He does like his broccoli a bit on the mushy side, but we're at least able to avoid canned green vegetables.

I can't imagine what spinach would be like after an hour, but I don't know what they were growing a hundred years ago. I can't even handle collard greens after an hour, but for some reason Slowlane's described method sounds really good. That's not THAT unhealthy is it? MMMMM bacon!

A friend's sister (in her 70's) will open a CAN of green beans and boil them for an hour, and no one can convince her otherwise. She may have the same clipping (LOL).

-Grainlady

OMG Fori - that is hilarious! Thanks for the giggle!

Alexa

Ah, your clipping brought back fond (?) memories of brown turnips, limp green beans, and those tasty but unidentifiable vegetables my grandmother cooked to death. If the clipping dates from around 1900, most women were cooking on a cookstove (wood or kerosene) and when they got a fire going, they wanted to get the good out of it!

That is too funny! Now I know why I disliked my Grandmothers cooking so much. Explains a lot about her roasts too!

LOL. I enjoyed reading that. I'd love to see some of the other stuff in that scrapbook though

Spinach I usually eat raw, but I've been known to cook collard greens with a smoked pork hock for an hour or two, just like Grandma used to. And I'm from Michigan, not from the south, before any conclusions are drawn, LOL.

I still cook green beans way more than 5-7 minutes too. I want vegetables to be tender, not "crisp tender", I want them cooked all the way through or I want them raw, no middle ground for me. That includes any vegetables that I've grown myself and if a restaurant insists on serving me half cooked vegetables I'll leave them on the plate and that goes double for potatoes.

I've never cooked a beet for five hours, though. And I still like canned green beans and carrots far more than I like frozen ones.

Annie

I wonder if peas cooked for 40 minutes would even still be round? And if asparagus cooked for half an hour would be anything but strings!

Too funny. No wonder they had to invent a cartoon character to get kids to eat spinach. :D

That's a hoot, Annie! We are total opposites on veggies and meat. I like my veggies crunchy and my beef very well done. Different folks .....

I live in Denver, and some things must be cooked longer here than at sea level. Plain old potatoes are one. We have a friend who visits from Seattle, and he loves to cook a gourmet meal for us when here. His schedule got way off when the potatoes were not getting done! It gets much worse as you go into the mountains.

As some have said here, I like my veg cooked through or not at all. There was a time when it seemed that all restaurants were serving green beans "al dente". While I do not want things overcooked, I do want them cooked until tender. We love broccoli, and eat it often. It can take more or less time depending on the broccoli. I don't know if it is the freshness or what, but I sometimes under cook it.

later,
DP

I can go either way on a lot of veggies - al dente or soft, depending on the recipe. I love crunchy stir-fried veggies, and I like long-stewed string beans. My 91 year-old FIL is with us this summer, and it's green beans out of a can for that man. I can also get him to eat pickled beets, but other than that it's meat and potatoes for him.

One veg I can't bring myself to cook to mush is asparagus.

seagrass

If I am going to make mashed potatoes, I boil them. All other vegetables are steamed for the shortest time possible. I prefer my veggies quite crunchy, so if I have company for dinner I automatically steam their vegies for a longer time. Once, when I didn't overcook some green beans a guest complained that they were still raw. I am of the belief that spinich should be steamed only until wilted.

I bet that would be a fun scrapbook to go through. Brings back (not)fond memories of sitting at the table for hours because I couldn't choke down the boiled-to-mush broccoli and we couldn't leave the table until our plates were clean because there were starving children in India. And boiled-to-death cabbage...yick. And Dad grew wonderful corn. Just picked and yes, boiled for a full 20 minutes.

Aunt Juanita made the best overcooked vegies. Whenever we'd visit she'd toss some bacon into a quart of home-canned green beans and boil it until the liquid was gone. Much more flavorful than Mom's broc.

Katie, at my grandparents' house, it was the starving children in China who were dragged out. I don't think my grandmother knew that there was such a thing as a vegetable that didn't come from a can.

Luckily, my mother discovered that fresh vegetables were better and cheaper once we moved to CA. I love 'em raw, al dente, or tender. The only veggies I really like "overcooked" are long simmered, Southern style greens and veggies in stew or soup, but I'll eat just about any vegetable served up to me.

Except Chinese bitter melon. Feh! :P And I could care less if I ever ate a fresh or frozen lima bean again, though I like the dried ones...go figure.

Hush! Hush!....I love boiled todeath cabbage ( but like it raw and gently steamed too) but hate khaki green beans!
Linda C

LOL, LindaC, I like my cabbage sauteed with a bit of bacon, but it still gets cooked not-quite-to-death, but very tender.

Annie