Extra Credit: Turnip greens are a grown-up addiction

Do you ever get hooked on a certain food? I do. I go on a binge and eat that at every meal, almost as though it were an addictive drug.

Right now, my drug of choice is turnip greens.

The funny thing is, that is one of the foods that, as a child, I swore never again to consume if I ever got off the farm. We ate a lot of them back then. They were cheap and available, and there were a bunch of mouths around the supper table, so a big bowl of turnip greens was ever-present.

After a meal featuring greens, I would walk down the dirt road to the highway and wait for a Rockefeller limousine to whisk me away to a world where, according to the movies, everyone dined on filet mignon and cr pes suzette, whatever those were.

No limos drove down the two-lane blacktop near our house; my mother kept cooking turnip greens; I kept eating them. I vowed, though, that someday - some wonderful day - I would be free enough to send the accursed greens back if anyone ever served them to me.

Sure enough, after leaving the farm, I pretty much wrote greens off my diet. I learned to love other foods that we hadn't grown: broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, mushrooms. I forgave pinto beans, which I had lumped with turnip greens. I even experimented with my father's late-night farmer snack: a hunk of corn bread soaked in a glass of milk.

Turnip greens, though, stayed off my table.

Then, a year or so ago, that disgusting dish was served at our Wednesday night supper at church. It hadn't changed - all mushy and ugly and green - but I considered my surroundings and took it as a

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