The beginning of the week was super fresh with two different salsa recipes (Roasted Corn Salsa and Plum Salsa), but today, I did some cooking. I have never made this type of recipe, but I love all sorts of sauteed greens.

Creamed greens are super popular in the Southern USA and it’s usually made with collards or spinach. Typically, they contain a lot of heavy cream and bacon, but this version doesn’t have either of those. I guess you could say this vegan version is healthier then, too!

Right off the bat, I did make quite a big change to the recipe – I didn’t use collard greens. I got a box of baby kale, spinach and chard which I thought would work the same (with maybe just a little less texture). Because I used baby greens, I didn’t blanch them like the recipe says to do with the collards. I simply sauteed them, squeezed out any water, then continued as written. This was a lot faster and there was no prep for the greens because they are already washed and no need to chop anything.

The recipe comes together pretty quickly once the greens are cooked. Just have to saute the onion, add some flour, garlic and smoked paprika and make a roux with almond milk. After that thickens up a bit, the greens get mixed in, along with some salt, pepper and lemon juice. That’s it.

I really liked this dish. The almond milk makes it super creamy and it almost feels like it has heavy cream. I did cut the smoked paprika down about 50% which was a good call because it would have been too much smokey flavour otherwise. This was the perfect amount of smoke and it added a nice red colour. The garlic was also delicious here too, obviously. You can never go wrong with some garlic.

This was a very tasty way to end the week. I hope you have a good weekend!