Went outside a couple of days ago and picked tomatoes and chard. Love this warm fall we are having.

Garden vegetables in a basket

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Took this photo of my red chard before the recent freeze. I’m afraid to go out there and see what’s left of it..

Red chard shows off its jewel colors in my garden earlier this week

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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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I had forgotten that Swiss chard really is a biennial plant in the garden, and was disappointed last summer when the small plants I had grown from seed just didn’t do that much. But after a fairly mild winter with no really hard freezes, the plants are looking just fine. Dinner! I like to pick a good bunch, cut the stems from the leaf parts, roll up the leaves and slice in half inch ribbons. Then start steaming the cut-up stems first, add the leaves after a few minutes, and when picked fresh from your garden, they don’t take long to cook. You can cook up a nice white sauce with cheese melted into it to go over the steamed chard, or go the Italian way with chard added to garlic fried in olive oil, all mixed together on steamed red potatoes. So good.

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This is a variety of Swiss Chard called Bright Lights. It’s pretty as a bouquet, with some pink stems, white stems, and here you can see the yellow and the red. Chard is so easy to grow from seeds or starts, and in climates like Seattle, actually winters over sometimes.

Chard and garlic are made for each other. Lightly steam the cut-up chard (I cut up the stems separately and start them first so they cook just a bit longer), then dump all into plenty of hot olive oil that has a whole lot of lightly browned sliced garlic in it. Cook a little more and then serve. A Sicilian way is to mix in steamed potatoes. Yum!

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These plants overwintered in this mild-frost winter. They were very easy to start from seed. So cheerful and colorful in the early spring sunshine!