I love Swiss chard and enjoy its beauty as well as its taste and healthfulness. One way to prepare it is to cut the stems out and steam them first, cut up, so they are a bit more tender, and then take the leaves, pile them up, and slice them into half-inch (1 cm) ribbons and put them in the steamer basket with the stem pieces. Cook ’til tender. Then either a cream sauce or an Italian one with garlic and olive oil, and you have a yummy treat for a cold night.

Fresh-washed green, yellow and red chard being sliced into ribbons

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Couldn’t resist a little food abundance photo: five pies! Marionberry, strawberry-rhubarb, peach, pecan, and coconut cream pie. Boy oh boy.

Five pies adorn a Thanksgiving table. We are grateful!

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Hope you’re not tired of all the red colors in recent posts. Fall seems to do that to me sometimes. Here’s a apple for you from an outdoor display.

Closeup of a shiny, red, fresh apple

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Saw these at the farmer’s market. Aren’t they gorgeous? Makes me want to just grab one and chomp on it.

Fresh washed carrots at the farmer’s market

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Someone brought these cutie cupcakes to a great party on Saturday. And it looks like someone sampled the pretty red icing, too!

Adorable mini cupcakes, with sprinkles

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Those of us who love to photograph beautiful things in nature are blessed to have farmer’s markets in town. I can’t decide whether the nectarines with the speckles or the solid colors taste best. Guess I’ll just have to get both.

Red and yellow fresh nectarines at the Burien Farmer’s Market

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The harvest this year is great. The amazing green pole beans could have climbed to the heavens had I let them and all are bearing so well. If you haven’t tried the purple ones, they do taste great but when you cook them they become green like regular stringbeans. The yellow ones, or wax beans, are very slightly different in taste from the green ones. All are delicious!

Remember, when storing string beans in the fridge, do not put extra water in the plastic bag, as they will get a yucky brown rust on them. Keep them fairly dry and they will keep a lot better. If you can keep them that long. I love them raw as well as steamed with butter, lemon juice and a dash of Spike seasoning. Yum!

Purple, yellow (wax) and green stringbeans just picked

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My tomatoes look and taste great this year. Last year many of them split, which was so disappointing. What I learned was that happened because I had underwatered, so the tomatoes had thick, tough skins which burst when the plant got a good dousing when it rained. This year I was better about the watering and it made a big difference. Also I used better fertilizer, added alfalfa meal at planting, AND went out with a dry paintbrush when it was flowering to try to get better fruit set. Something worked!

Cherry tomatoes in different stages of ripeness

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We went to Moses Lake WA for the first time, and I got to go to the Farmers Market and buy some fresh peaches. Is there anything prettier? I like this post very much and am calling it my Best Post of the Week.

Fresh peaches on display at a farmers market

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We have a very young cherry tree with five different kinds of cherries grafted onto a dwarf rootstock. This is its second year and it actually had some cherries. I put some old sheer curtains around the fruiting branches and attached it with clothespins, which I had read about online, and it did work to protect them from the birds, even if it looked ugly in the yard. So here are the bing-type black ones that I picked a week or so ago, and they did taste as wonderful as I had hoped.

Do you see that the cherries are so shiny that they are like little mirrors, and they are reflecting my backyard with the tall trees and the blue sky? The trees to the left in the reflection are still in the sunlight and the others are now in shade. Fun!

Shiny black cherries, just picked

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