First week out of school has been relaxing and fun. When the hubs has a night off on a "school night" during the school year we often opt for take-out. Now that I'm out for summer, however, I'm in the kitchen cooking up a storm. Last night we were in the mood for some down home comfort food before I start cooking food from around the world. I centered our meal around one of my favorites, greens! I've never met a green I didn't like. I was helped along by acquiring some beautiful kale (they think) from my parents' greenhouse. Can anyone tell just from looking at the picture? They threw it in there and it grew, never mind they don't know what kind of green it is- we eat any of them anyway.

I was feeling down home as I said, so I had to start with some ham hocks. I often try to "skinny" them up a bit though, with just a mere slice of bacon for flavor. Last night we were going full-out.

Not so appetizing in the package, but adds great flavor.

I threw those in the pot with a touch of olive oil while I chopped an onion and a couple cloves of garlic. Those go in with the hocks to sweat out about five minutes. In go the greens along with some S & P as well as some crushed red pepper and about 6 cups of water.

I let the greens simmer and get yummy for only about 45 minutes last night because we were starving, but I like them really tender and could have let them go longer.

The greens were what we really wanted out of the meal, but I also had some great young potatoes (again from Mom and Dad) and made my fave pork chop recipe from allrecipes.com:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/rosemary-sherry-pork-chops/detail.aspx

End Result:

That's my version of comfort on a plate (a rooster plate nonetheless).

Now I'm ready for my kitchen to venture around the world with the recipes I've picked from Signature Dishes from Around the World.