Hey, I'm Trace Barnett.

Welcome to Garden party.

Today we're making and eating goose feed feed for us.

And not those feathered friends out back.

You're probably wondering where the name goose feed came from.

And I'm sure that's hidden in the tales of Appalachia.

My mom lives 25 minutes away, and they grew up calling it rabbit feed.

So I guess they had more rabbits running around than geese.

But the name actually comes from spring greens, just perfectly coming up out of your garden bed and enter your yard.

Those tender grains are the perfect food for geese, rabbits, chickens and people alike.

So today I'm using mustard greens, fresh spinach, and fresh romaine lettuce right out of the garden.

I'm going to use a sharp knife here.

And what I want to do is I really just want to almost shred that lettuce.

We're going to use the lettuce as the base for our Goose Feed and pile all of our other greens directly on top.

Throw that directly on to a large platter.

We want this to just be like spring's bounty.

Jumping out at us as we a sample our goose feed here.

Next I want to add our mustard greens.

So if you're using any kind of green like kale, mustard greens, dandelion green, be sure and wash those thoroughly.

They spring greens usually have a lot of residual dirt or grit that can get locked into them.

So do it like my mom always did it.

Get your big dish pan out and just drowned those greens and water multiple times.

So to work with our greens here, I'm going to pull this away from the stem because we don't want the stem there.

And then I'm simply going to rip it over our salad there a lot of times with mustard greens and kales and other greens, it's easier to rip them rather than cut them, because if you cut them, what that's going to do is it's going to smush them in a way.

And we don't want a soggy green on our goose feed.

so now that we've layered our mustard greens on to our fresh romaine lettuce, I'm going to throw in some spinach.

Another good option for this would be arugula if you've got that coming up in your garden as well.

I love the colors of this as they come through.

Looks like spring on a platter.

You roughly need about 2 pounds of greens for this recipe, and of course that's going to vary depending on the size of your crowd.

But I will say that you need to have more greens than you think you're probably going to need, because they do wilt up a bit at when we pour our bacon jam on top.

Now that we've got our spinach layered on top of our goose feed here, I'm going to sprinkle some green onions directly on top.

Now, you can't make goose feed without having green onions and radishes.

So just loosely chop your radishes.

I'm going to remove the top and the bottom of that.

Cut it in half.

I'm going to cut that in half again.

And then I'm just going to run my knife directly through that.

Just a simple chop I love radishes so the more the merrier.

I'm also going to use a few radishes here just for a little bit of garnish.

Because, you know we like to make things pretty.

Add those just to the side there.

Now here comes the most important component of our goose feed.

So traditionally in old Appalachian recipes they would pour hot bacon grease and bacon drippings directly over the goose feed, almost like a wilted salad of sorts.

But I'm going to upgrade ours just a tad by using bacon jam.

Most of the recipes from Garden Party are old family staples that have like an updated twist.

And that updated twist could be something where it's budget friendly, or it has a new flavor technique, or even a spice that maybe they didn't have 200 years ago.

goose feed is something that I have been eating since I was a child.

Like I remember going out with both of my grandmothers.

One called it rabbit food, one called it goose feed.

we would go out into the garden, gather all the spring greens, even into the yard, and gather dandelion greens, anything wild even, and combine it into this delicious salad that was wilted with bacon grease.

But I'm thinking, what's more flavorful than bacon grease?

Bacon jam?

You're going to need roughly a pound or a pound and a half of good quality thick cut bacon.

You want thick cut bacon because we don't want our bacon to disappear into our jam.

so I am slicing our bacon up here.

In to chunks I've actually found that it's easiest to slice bacon up by just leaving it in the slab that it comes, and You want to rough chop this bacon and leave it in larger chunks because we want to have that little bit of bacon bite when we have our bacon jam on top of our goose feed.

once you have your bacon, nice and chopped add that to a large skillet always start your bacon out in a cool skillet, too, because it helps crisp it up.

I have went ahead and chopped a whole onion, roughly just about a cup of onion, just small, finely chopped.

And I'm going to add that to our bacon as well.

Now let's transfer our bacon and onions to our stovetop over medium high heat.

so while our bacons and onions are cooking away over medium high heat and getting all nice and golden and crispy I'm going to combine one and a half cups of dark brown sugar.

This is going to form that really good sticky ooey gooey sauce that one thinks of when they think of bacon jam.

I'm also going to add a cup of sorghum molasses and sorghum molasses has that really good smoky flavor.

Super southern too.

I always have to get a little taste of it.

Give that a good stir.

Now to deglaze our pan, I'm going to add a couple tablespoons of red wine vinegar.

You can also use balsamic And if you imbibe you can also use a little bit of bourbon because it's just going to cook off.

But what we want are those nice bacon drippings to release into our bacon jam.

Just give that a good aggressive stir to get all of that loosened up at the bottom of the pan.

I'm going to go ahead and add our mixture here.

And you don't have to worry about mixing this too much.

You kind of just want the sorghum to kind of combine somewhat with the brown sugar.

Stir that really well keep your sorghum on hand.

Also because you may need just a tiny bit more actually always a little bit more.

You can't have too much sorghum.

So I'm going to put just a tiny bit in there.

Give that a good stir.

After we've added our last bit of sorghum and to our pot here, we're going to cook that over a medium heat for 8 to 12 minutes.

Just until all of that brown sugar dissolves, the bubbles start to form, and all of that sorghum turns into nice syrup for our jam.

going to add just a pinch or two of black pepper And we're ready to plate up.

So while our bacon jam is still nice and hot to wilt those greens, let's plate this up.

I'm going to plate it the old fashioned way.

So I'm going to take a little bit of corn pone here.

Just some fried corn bread.

I'm going to take a little bit of this goose feed.

Actually a lot of this goes feed.

And I'm going to pour that just right on top of that corn pone.

I'm going to be stingy and get all the radishes and green onion too.

So sorry for whoever else is eating this.

And then this is the best part.

Take that hot bacon jam and just put it right over those grains and that corn pone.

And get a little that juice there.

Drizzle that amply over your grains.

And what that's going to do is it's just slightly wilt the grains just so you can serve this as a salad side.

You can serve it as a starter.

You can add a protein and have it as a main meal.

And I promise it's not going to turn you into a goose.

Hasn't me anyway.

Now is the best part.

This might make me quack a little or whatever geese do honk.

The bigger the better.

Bigger the flavor.

Spring greens with bacon jam, goose food.

Don't fly away now.

Hey, I'm Trace Barnett.

I lost that, if y'all couldn't tell Feed for us and not our other feather.

Feather FFFFF Joe.

Thank you.

I'll be sitting around watching somebody cut radishes quietly when you were growing up.

Yeah, Now I know why them geese search this out.

I like it.

Okay, cool.

We're good.

Yeah.

Is that a wrap?