ENJOY OLD-TIME TENNESSEE CREASY GREENS!

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This forageable is so popular in the South it's sold in grocery stores. But you can raise your own!

By Fran Marengo (and MOTHER's staff)

When we moved (from up north) to our Tennessee homestead a few years ago, we discovered a delicious—and almost year-round—vegetable that's not only a culinary delight but also a gardener's dream: It requires virtually no care at all . . . plantsitself every year . . . and survives unprotected even in snowy, sub-zero weather. Known in these parts as "creasy greens" or simply "creasies", this land-loving cousin of watercress looks and tastes much like its aquatic relative, but literally grows like a weed—even in poor, sandy soil—and provides us with fresh salad makings from the garden during a season when most folks can only leaf through seed catalogs and dream of warmer days.

A LESSON LEARNED

When we first noticed creasies growing in the long-neglected garden of our new home-place, we mistook them for common winter cress and—since we'd tried that forageable before and hadn't cared for its bitter aftertaste—promptly plowed the greenery under, right along with the rest of the weeds and overgrowth. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Most of MOTHER's foragers are very fond of both young winter-cress greens and the unopened flower buds.] But when patches emerged again the following year, one of our wise neighbors pointed out the plants' characteristic difference: Although a sprig of common winter cress has one to four pairs of small leaves below a large, rounded end leaf, creasy greens have from five to ten sets of lateral leaves below a bigger leaf. He suggested that we give the plant a try, and we're glad we took his advice. We discovered that the sweet-tasting but pungent fresh leaves—when chopped finely—make a wonderfully piquant topping for tacos and salads, and when cooked in quiches and other dishes become as mild as spinach.

[EDITORS NOTE: Actually, the plant Ms. Marengo describes is winter cress . . . but a different species: Barbarea verna, which is also known as early winter cress, Belle Isle cress, or — in the South — creasy greens or scurvy grass. Its closest relative, Barbarea vulgaris (common winter cress), ranges farther north than creasies — up into Ontario and Nova Scotia — and south to Missouri and Kansas. Barbarea verna can be found from Massachusetts southward . . . and both varieties are also distributed, although sparsely, in the central Plains and the Northwest. Folks living in the Pacific states canenjoy Barbarea orthoceras, or American winter cress.]