Collard Greens

Each day of the week offers a menu aimed at a different aspect of meal planning. There's a family meal, a kids' menu aimed at younger tastes, a heat-and-eat meal that recycles leftovers, a budget meal that employs a cost- cutting strategy, a meatless or "less meat" dish for people who may not be strict vegetarians but are trying to cut down on meat, an express meal that requires little or no preparation, and an entertaining menu that's quick.Shopping ListWhat you'll need for this week's menus (consult recipes for exact amounts)

Micah's is a soul-food restaurant with a split personality -- part cafeteria, part banquet hall. If you don't mind carrying your own food on a plastic tray to the dining room, Micah's is a good choice for a hearty, comforting meal of lake trout, ribs or smothered pork chops.We entered the bright cafeteria on a recent weekday night, and got on line to survey the evening's choices. Most people were having their dinners boxed up for carryout, but a few, like us, were planning to eat in the dining room.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The exit was quick, the words were few, the message was clear. If Fuzzy Zoeller had only done this a year ago.After blowing past a mob of reporters as he came off the course at Augusta National, and declining an interview with CBS, Zoeller went into the clubhouse and disappeared for 15 minutes in the champions' locker room yesterday. He then walked out a back staircase and into a waiting car.Zoeller broke his silence, however briefly, and answered a couple of questions about a round of 1-under 71 in which he lost a share of the clubhouse lead with a bogey at 18."

Barbecue is an intensely personal thing. I came of age while unreservedly preoccupied by the barbecued chicken and ribs of the black community in Oakland, Calif.Trailing a 3,000-mile wake of bleach-white rib bones to the East Coast, my enthusiasm continues unabated. Thank goodness for Yellow Bowl. Ribs (always the backbone, so to speak, of "soul food" cooking) are good, and all the rest of the fixings are even better.Thirty years old this year, Yellow Bowl claims to be the oldest continuously operated black-owned restaurant in Baltimore.

MIAMI -- Three stories. One you may already know: Tiger Woods, the young golf champion, who looks black, told Oprah Winfrey last week that he is not. Or at least, not just. Mr. Woods, whose ancestry is Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian, told the talk-show host that he considers himself a "Cablinasian."If you want to know why that makes me wince, listen to the second and third stories. One deals with Homer Plessy, who looked white. In 1892, Plessy, who described himself as "one-eighth" black, was ejected from a Whites Only train car. He took his grievance all the way to the Supreme Court -- and lost.

For one of the most nutritious dining choices of the year, try the vegetables of winter.Dark green, leafy vegetables, such as collard greens and kale, are abundant and inexpensive and they're an excellent source of beta-carotene.This meatless recipe takes advantage of the nourishing benefits of collards and kale, which are both members of the cabbage family. Collards have a slightly bitter flavor; kale is sweeter. When cooked together, their flavors enhance each other.Both vegetables have been prized for centuries in the cooking of Africa, Northern Europe and the American South because they are filling, delicious and low in fat. They are also loaded with vitamins A and C, folic acid, calcium, iron and dietary fiber.

Cindy Wolf was so excited about her latest sweet potato creation -- a custard she made in her home kitchen -- that she bundled up the custard cups and sped over to her restaurant to let the staff taste them. "They were perfect -- like velvet in my mouth," exclaimed the new chef of the soon-to-open Southern restaurant Savannah in Fells Point. Her staff agreed.Ms. Wolf has come a long way with sweet potatoes since her youth in the South when they were served for Thanksgiving in a candied sweet potato casserole, dripping with marshmallows and brown sugar.

What am I doing here at a converted Sizzler at 4 o'clock on a Monday afternoon about to eat an enormous Southern dinner?Do I really want to be standing in line with a thousand other people at a place called Carolina Cookin' on Route 40 West? So I can eat fried chicken and greens with fatback?Don't the owners of Carolina Cookin' know this is a bad time to open a new restaurant, that people aren't eating out as much anymore, that at plenty of places I review we're almost the only customers?

The model for the Kwanzaa Karamu is taken from the image of an African village after a bountiful harvest when all members of the community bring their produce together and create a feast. One person brings yams, another black-eyed peas or chicken and yet another peanuts. Feasting on foods contributed by each member of the community or family recognizes unity, cooperative economics, collective work and responsibility within2 The next recipe is from Heart & Soul magazine.Collard Greens with OkraServes 62 pounds fresh collard greens or 20 ounces frozen collards2 teaspoons corn oil2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage or rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried1/2 cup chopped scallions1/4 teaspoon salt1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)

FROM time to time, Glimpses has described the city's old Chinese restaurants, its Italian restaurants and many of the Jewish delicatessens that used to dot the East Baltimore landscape.Black restaurants are a different category because until the late 1950s and early 1960s, the city's blacks had no choice but to patronize their own eateries if they wanted to eat out. Jim Crow kept them out of white establishments.That, of course, has changed, but it didn't change so long ago that even middle-aged Baltimoreans have forgotten . . .Sess's, at 1639 Division St., between Druid Hill and Pennsylvania avenues, was the most popular black eatery for many years.

Do people up here in pit-beef country fight over what makes good barbecue? I know many people have strong opinions about barbecue, but often as not, they turn out to be from one of the barbecuing pilgrimage sites like Memphis or the Carolinas, where people will go on about it. I kind of like that we're more relaxed about it here. It leaves the door open for more upstart businesses and more variations on the theme. Which brings us to Harbor Que (rhymes with "barbecue"), which opened around Memorial Day in a free-standing porch-front place on Lawrence Street where Alladin's Cafe used to be. It's just off Fort Avenue, along the eastern boundary of the Riverside neighborhood.

Elfegne Ethiopian Cafe is a peach. Owned and operated, pretty much single-handedly, by former mortgage broker Emu Kidanewolde, this small and tidy 20-seat storefront cafe is more than just a great place to feast on inexpensive home-cooked Ethiopian food. Elfegne also acts as a de facto community center for the residents of Washington Village (aka Pigtown). It opens at 7 in the morning for breakfast (Kidanewolde will have been there for hours already, making homemade injera, the fermented Ethiopian bread staple)

As a cuisine connoisseur -- with a specialty in soul food -- one of the most exciting things about moving to a new city is all of the restaurants to be discovered. A few years ago, I moved from New Orleans to Baltimore with high expectations. With a similar African-American population, surely Charm City would offer a bevy of eateries with foods founded by its largest ethnic group -- perfectly seasoned fried chicken, oh-so-tender collard greens, or sugary-sweet honey butter cornbread. While Baltimore does not have the equivalent of a marquee soul food restaurant like Washington's B. Smith's, New York's Sylvia's or New Orleans' Dooky Chase, it does have several offerings near the downtown area that satisfy the craving.

Dorothy Green, a homemaker who was known for her Sunday family dinners, died Saturday of a stroke at Good Samaritan Hospital. She was 90. Dorothy Brown was born and raised in Jamestown, S.C. She moved to Baltimore in the mid-1930s and worked as a housekeeper for several years. Mrs. Green, who lived for many years in a Wolfe Street rowhouse in East Baltimore until moving to Northeast Baltimore last year, was an accomplished quilter and seamstress. Mrs. Green enjoyed raising her children and opened her home to care for neighborhood children, family members said.

Asian minimalism and low-carb diets may be hot trends in the food world, but Louisiana has never heard of them. More power to Fells Point's most engaging restaurant, where haute cuisine meets Southern comfort food. Here dishes like crab bisque with jumbo lump crabmeat and veal tenderloin in puff pastry with foie gras are the order of the day. And you have to love the fact that the three a la carte side dishes offered at this upscale restaurant are andouille sausage, collard greens and creamy grits.

I could hear Al Green, but I couldn't see him because the crowd was too thick. The gospel-soul legend performed Friday night - the biggest act of this year's Artscape, the city's celebration of music, dance, theater, visual arts and literature. During the next two days, I and the other music lovers who thronged to the festival reveled in sounds ranging from Afro-Cuban jazz to the digital beats of electronica. Green's unmistakable sound hung in the air like the smell of ham hocks and collard greens, whetting my appetite for something I knew would fill me up. Finally, after stepping on a few toes and pushing past some folks, I was able to see the man. Telling us that "everythang's gon be alright/He's comin' back/like He said He would," Rev. Al, decked out in a three-piece ivory suit, was in country-preacher mode but only for a moment.

Lula M. Woodland, 75, cleaning-service worker Lula M. Woodland, a retired cleaning service worker who enjoyed cooking for family gatherings, died of cancer Tuesday at her Northwest Baltimore home. She was 75. She was born Lula Watson in Newport News, Va., where she graduated from high school. A resident of Baltimore since the 1940s, she was married in 1951 to John R. Woodland, a warehouseman, who died in 1972. Mrs. Woodland worked for 20 years as a clothes presser at Ingleside Dry Cleaners in Catonsville before retiring in 1975.

I would like a recipe for collard greens, the authentic way Southern ladies would prepare it. Y'all should know that a true Southern lady would only prepare herself for dinner, then go out to eat. But true Southerners swear there is nothing better than a pot of black-eyed peas and a steamin' bowl of collard greens. Both are flavored with ham hocks or another piece of pork, and if you serve them with warm corn bread, you've got a little bit of heaven on your table. Believe it or not, this is the second request for a collard greens recipe that I've received this week.

STUDENTS IN Yvonne Lund's food and nutrition classes at Wilde Lake High School have been creating a little holiday spirit by constructing a village out of graham crackers and candy, and preparing a feast for their classmates. The confectionery town, called "Sugar Shacks," is on display in the school's guidance office. "These houses are just fabulous," Lund said. "We have everything from small castles to villages. People are coming from all over to see them." The town includes an ice cream shop, whose path is paved with peppermints, a ski shop, a farm complete with animals, and the Ho Ho Ho Night Club.

If you grew up south of here and yearn for traditional, home-style cooking, Courtney's Place in Randallstown might be the restaurant for you. Courtney's, which specializes in Southern food such as catfish and lake trout, collard greens, ribs and fried chicken, looks as if it might be more than just a restaurant to the neighborhood: It was quiet when we were there, but it has entertainment, ranging from live jazz to karaoke, nearly every night. Courtney's has a full bar that's cleverly situated behind the main dining room and can be entered by two standard-sized doorways.