No you don't have to but if you do heat them up until softened a bit they are much easier to process and you will get much more of the juice out of them. As an alternative you can just wash and toss them into bags in the freezer overnight then thaw the next day and juice them however you wish. Either method - heating or freezing - softens them and breaks down the cell walls so you get more juice from them and less waste. The heating has the additional benefit of killing bacteria. Dave

Dorothy knows me well. I learned to cook from my southern aunts and my grandmother and from my dad, because my mom really didn't like cooking. So, everything I cook is southern style, which means added fat, salt and sugar. I can, by the way, cook healthy, omitting most of the salt and all the sugar and using olive oil instead of bacon drippings, but I generally don't. Well, you know, being a southern cook I like to use some sort of pork....we southern girls just gotta have our pig fat. So, you can use bacon or bacon drippings, salt pork, hog jowls, a couple of slices of ham or some Eckrich sausage or whatever....and, Dorothy, notice that I didn't even mention you could serve them with chittlin' corn bread or cracklin' corn bread. Nor did I mention pig's feet. LOL Here's how I fix collard greens: Pick a mess of collard greens--say, about 2 or 3 lbs. of them. Discard any wilted or yellow leaves. Wash then and rinse them really, really well. It can take several rinsings to remove all the soil and you don't want your greens to feel gritty when you eat them. In general, you can cook them by simmering them in a pan of water until they are tender. Be sure to stir occasionally. To about 2 or 3 lbs. of collard greens, I'd add a hamhock or hambone or about 1/ 2 lb. of ham. Add between 1/2 and 1 teaspoon of salt or your favorite salt substitute. Simmer until tender. Taste them. If they seem a little bitter to you, you can stir in a small amount of sugar...maybe a half or full teaspoon. Serve with cornbread and use the cornbread to sop up the liquid on the plate. Here's a recipe from an old Southern Living cookbook for Ocracoke Collard Greens: 1 bunch collard greens, about 3 1/2 lbs., cleaned and drained (you can spin them in a salad spinner to help them drain more quickly) 1/2 lb. salt pork or ham, cubed 1 teaspoon salt 4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered Place the collard greens, salt pork, and enough water to cover the collards and salt pork in a large dutch oven. Bring to a rapid boil. Reduce heat to low, place lid on dutch oven and simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours. Add the quartered potatoes, cover the pot and simmer for about 25-30 minutes longer, or until potatoes are just fork tender. (Don't simmer too long or the potatoes will dissolve.) This serves 6 to 8. It is pretty much a law in the south that southern-style greens always must be eaten with cornbread. It also is a law that if you cook turnip greens, you are required to chop up an onion and a turnip and cook them with the greens. You can use any kind of cornbread as an accompaniment to your mess of greens. One old southern favorite is Crackling Cornbread. In the olden days when folks slaughtered their own hogs, you used the chitterlings (pronounced 'chitlins') from them but you also could use the skin from a chicken, commonly called cracklings. (If you want to know how to make cracklins' from chicken skin, let me know.) I use a thoroughly modern recipe that substitutes bacon for chitlins' or cracklins' although, if you actually have chitlins' or cracklins', feel free to substitute them for the bacon in this recipe. Crackling Cornbread 1/4 C. plus T. bacon drippings 2 cups cornmeal 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, well-beaten (being a southern country girl, I use fresh ones from the henhouse which, of course, houses a lovely collection of southern hens and roosters) 2 cups buttermilk (you can use regular milk, but it won't be as tasty) 3/4 C. to 1 cup crumbled cooked bacon, or an equivalent amount of chitterlings or cracklings. Place 1/4 cup of bacon drippings in a 10" cast-iron skillet. Heat it up in an oven preheated to 450 degrees. As it is heating, combine the cornmeal, baking soda and salt and mix well. Melt the remaining 2 T. of bacon drippings (I pop them into the microwave in a coffee cup) and combine them and the 2 eggs with the buttermilk. Stir well to combine the wet ingredients and then add to the bowl containing the dry ingredients. Stir to blend well, and then stir in the crumbled bacon, chitterlings or cracklings. Pour into the pre-heated cast-iron skillet and bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, or until top of cornbread is a nice golden-brown. Serves about 8 normal people or 4 hungry gardeners or farm hands. If you don't have a cast iron pan in which to cook the cornbread, you can use a regular baking pan and if you're trying to avoid the fats in the bacon dripppings (oops, the southern gal in me almost said pig fat instead of bacon drippings), you can spray the baking pan with PAM. It won't be quite as good, but it will be edible. LOL You can cook about any green using the above receipes, and just substitute spinach or kale or whatever for the collards. If you like soup, I have a recipe around here somewhere for kale-sausage soup. You can use Swiss Chard in virtually any recipe that calls for spinach, like boiled spinach or creamed spinach. If you need a recipe for creamed spinach or kale-sausage soup, let me know. There, I hope that gets you started on a successful career in (a) cooking greens, (b) making Crackling Corn Bread, and (c) southernizing your cooking style. Oh, and they are great sautee'd as Matt cooks them, and it is much healthier than the way I fix them. Dawn

I peel them, cut them into eighths and simmer them in a little water, some butter, about a teaspoon of sugar and some black pepper until tender. By then the liquids should have boiled down into a slightly syrupy coating. Yum!

Just me, one dog, and seven cats. The bird will be first done on a Weber grill. Charcoal with some hickory wood... indirect heat. Wings for snacks, breast meat for sandwiches, and the rest with carcass will be boiled for chili meat. Dolly dog gets all the skin unless I nibble some extra crispy parts. Cats get a bit of lean meat because they are household members. Boiled clean bones will go out to the garden where Mr. Possum will munch them down. Chili meat will be cut half and half with beef... round roast. Enough for about four pots of chili so most will get bagged and frozen for later. I have a 12 quart chili pot so it takes a couple pounds of meat for a batch. Work gives me this turkey every year. I like boiling the carcass because it uses the bird down to the last bit. My oldest sister is doing T-day and Grandma is doing T-day part two. Making chili out of most of my turkey is a fitting way to eat it up. : ) lyra