When Iris was born, she received a gift from the Seattle Public Library: a free board book. I chose My Food/Mi Comida by Rebecca Emberley. (I also got to thinking about how I could exploit this free gift thing, maybe by bringing in a huge sack of babies and demanding dozens of free books.)

Each page features a collage-style picture of a food and its name in English and Spanish. But not everyone approves of this book. As one Amazon reviewer said:

> “Radish” is another choice, but since it is such an uncommon vegetable, I am not sure why she didn’t use someting like a potato or a bell pepper, which are more common.

I’ll tell you why: because the Spanish word for radish is _el rábano_. If I were a masked bandit–and who’s to say I am not?–I would call myself El Rábano. I’d steal fresh ingredients from the trophy kitchens of the elite and cook them (the ingredients) into lavish banquets for the people.

I can hear them calling for me now. _¡Viva El Rábano!_

(Hmm, I guess this fantasy is heavily influenced by _Three Amigos._ I’m not sure what that says.)

Iris and I have been eating a lot of pecans. She doesn’t like any other nuts in non-spreadable form, but she loves pecans. Today she sprinkled some on her cereal and then fished them out of the milk one by one and ate them before continuing with the cereal. (Good parents do not buy the cereal in question, so I will say only that it rhymes with “Lunch Cherries.”)

Pecans have a reputation as expensive. I certainly would have told you they were, until I stopped to think about it yesterday and realized they’re not expensive at all. I bought a pound of them at Trader Joe’s for $6.29. Much less than a pound of steak or coffee–and not much more than a *cup* of coffee. (You can let the comparison slide this time, but please terminate my net connection if I ever use the term “Latte Factor.” Thank you.)

I realized that I thought of pecans as expensive purely because *they’re shelved next to the peanuts.* The peanuts at Trader Joe’s are about $2. The pecans are more than three times as much. But they’re at least three times as good. At least until I overdose on pecans and get a craving for almonds to put on my Lunch Cherries.

I’ve had my pressure cooker for over two years now, and I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of cooking meat in it, but it is the ultimate device for making greens. It’s like a rice cooker for greens, only better, since the greens, no matter how tough, are done in ten minutes.

Yesterday I went to Trader Joe’s and got one of their two-dollar bags of mixed braising greens. I threw the entire bag into the pressure cooker and, working off the recipe on the back of the bag, added one 5-ounce can of tomato juice, a sliced onion, and salt. I brought it up to high pressure and left it there for eight minutes, then let out the pressure. The greens (a mix of mustard, turnip, kale, and spinach) were perfectly cooked–even the stems. I served them with shrimp and grits, I would have eaten them as dinner.

If you have a pressure cooker, give this a try. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, I’m not sure I can recommend getting one just to cook greens. But if you know someone who cooks a lot of greens…well, this is the one I have.

I couldn’t possibly care less about the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but [The Splendid Table](http://www.splendidtable.org/)’s live Thanksgiving call-in episode is two hours of radio gold. You can get it from [their web site](http://www.splendidtable.org/) or on iTunes. And when you do, you’ll hear from the guy who knocked over his deep-frying turkey and find out what these people were talking about:

> **Lynne:** Melanie, you’re inside the bird?

> **Melanie:** Yes, ma’am.