It is a perfectly wonderful day for a big pot of collard greens with a cold blowing rain falling while I gather myself up for my return to the office in the morning.

Yesterday I replenished my supply of double smoked ham hocks, six in total. When I got home five went in the freezer and one was held out for today---my wife had already bought the collard greens (2 lbs) and that brings me to a question.

I do most of the shopping in the summer but in the winter my wife helps out when the shopping is reduced to the chain grocery stores. The collards she bought were "prepared" and packaged in one pound celopain bags The problem, which I pointed out to my wife, was that they did not cut out the heavy center vein---so there I am trying to cut that out of the chopped up pieces. When I asked my wife to not buy the "processed" kind but full bunches of collards---I got the stock answer---they don't have them anymore.

It seems post arrival of COVID the previous "free stock" of things like: mushrooms, hot peppers of all kinds, fresh vegetables (like collards, spinach, kale, mustard greens et al) are now only prepackaged. They do still have fruit, potatoes, tomatoes and onions as free stock so I am not sure why the difference with them.

Have you all seen a similar shift or do you still have access to "pick your own"?

Oh---and dinner will be collards and smoked pork chops----and not from a "market hog"---from a fat old pig